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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



ANCIENT 
CIVILIZATION 

AN INTRODUCTION 
TO MODERN HISTORY 

BY 

ARTHUR MAYER WOLFSON, Ph.D. 

PRINCIPAL OF THE JULIA RICHMAN HIGH SCHOOL 
NEW YORK, N. Y. 

Author of "Essentials in Ancient History" 




AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 



s^ 



t^ 



Copyright, igi6. 

BY 

ARTHUR MAYER WOLFSON 



All rights reserved 



10^ 



PPR 18 1916 



'l;I,A420836 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is indicated on the title page. It is 
written to meet the needs of classes which can devote only a 
brief amount of time to the study of Ancient History before 
taking up the study of Medieval and Modern History. The 
"Committee of Five" of the American Historical Association 
recommends "that if it seems wise to omit any detailed study of 
ancient history and to give three years substantially to the other 
three blocks, the teacher, while omitting all detail, may still 
attempt to give his pupils some idea of the growth of the ancient 
nations, and some idea of their achievements and their quali- 
ties." With this aim in view, only such details of the political 
history of antiquity have been here included as are necessary for 
an understanding of ancient civiUzation. Furthermore, only such 
elements of the life of the people of antiquity have been empha- 
sized as are necessary for a thorough comprehension of the his- 
tory of Western Europe in modern times. 

The book is written especially for the use of pupils in the first 
or second year of the high school course. The point of view of 
boys and girls fifteen or sixteen years old has therefore been kept 
in mind in the selection of details and in the wording and arrange- 
ment of the text ; and also in the choice of maps and illustrations. 
The maps are adequate for making clear the geographical refer- 
ences in the text. Several large pictures have been made to illus- 
trate the text — an object seldom attained by the illustrations 
in ancient histories. These pictures are carefully designed to 
arouse the imagination of the readers, and to assist them in real- 
izing the conditions of life in ancient times. 

Acknowledgment is due to Mr. Morris C. Deshel, teacher of 
history in the DeWitt Clinton High School, for his assistance in 
getting together the material for this textbook, and for the 
preparation of the references given under the Search Topics. 
For helpful criticisms, also, the author's thanks are due to the 
history teachers in the DeWitt Clinton High School and in the 
Julia Richman High School. 

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON. 

City of New York. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter I. The Time Before History Began i 

Chapter II. The History of the Ancient East 9 

Chapter III. Greek Contributions to Civilization 30 

Chapter IV. The Spread of Ancient Civilization Into the West 61 
Chapter V. The Transition from Ancient to Modern Civiliza- 
tion 97 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



Restoration of the Roman 

Forum Frontispiece 



Village of Lake Dwellers . 
The Ancient World . . . 
Egyptian Market Scene . 
Phoenicia and Palestine . . 
Persians Bringing Tribute 

Ancient Greece 

Greek Festival . . . . . 



5 
8 

17 
23 
27 

38 
53 



PAGE 
63 

68 



Early Tribes of Italy . . . 
The Roman Empire .... 
The City of Rome during the 

later Empire 79 

On a Roman Road ..... 92 

Life in a Germanic Forest . . 103 

Europe about 580 108 

Mohammedan Dominions . . 114 

Charlemagne's Empire ... 119 



ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 

CHAPTER I 
THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY BEGAN 

Ask yourself as you begin reading this book what is the first 
thing in life that you can remember. Probably the event hap- 
pened not more than ten or twelve years ago. Your ^j^^ sources 
father and mother cannot go back in memory more than of our 
three or four times as many years as that ; and practically ^^"^ ^ ^^ 
no man or woman alive to-day can recall things that happened 
a hundred years ago. And yet, at the very beginning of this 
book, you must imagine that your memory extends over thou- 
sands and thousands of years, for the beginning of man's history 
belongs to a time as long ago as that. 

Our knowledge of the story of man's existence on earth has 
been gathered slowly. Here and there in all parts of Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and America, a few bones of men and of animals, 
a few spearheads and arrowheads, a few fragments of clothing 
and cooking utensils have been found. From these, and from 
the rude pictures which men scratched on stones thousands of 
years ago, we have been able to piece together a record which 
carries back the story of man's life those thousands of years. 
We have learned something about his method of making himself 
shelter and clothing, something about the way he fought with 
the wild animals of the forest, something about the way he 
gathered his food and fed and reared his children. We know the 
steps by which, from a condition like that of a wild animal, he 
climbed up to the place which he occupies on earth to-day. 

The first men who lived on earth were little better than wild 
animals. They spent their time hunting for berries and roots 
and nuts in the forests. They had neither clothing nor shelter 



2 THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY BEGAN 

except that which nature furnished them. All day long they 
picked their way through underbrush, over and under fallen 
The first trees, across brooks and through marshes and mud-holes, 
liv^ed^n° hunting their food. Sometimes they watched great herds 
earth of wild oxen or of elephants plunging through the forest. 

At any moment they might be attacked by wolves or bears, or 
by the great clumsy animals, long since disappeared off the face 
of the earth, which were even larger than the modern elephant 
and rhinoceros. When the sun set, they sought shelter in 
the branches of trees or in caves in the hillsides or on the sea 
shore and waited for daylight to come. They had neither tools 
nor weapons except their rude clubs, and the stones which they 
picked up at need. Occasionally, by watching at drinking 
places and runways through the underbrush, they were able to 
catch small animals. They ate the flesh of these animals raw. 
They did not know how to make a fire, nor how to fashion into 
tools the sticks and stones which they found. 

But even the first men who lived on earth had three things 
that were denied to the lower animals. First of all they had 
Nature's brains capable of development. They could think things 
three gifts out for themselves and teach their children, so that each 
° °^ ^ generation became wiser and more skillful than the last. 

Second, they had hands adapted to delicate operations. Study 
your own hand; compare it with the hand of a monkey. Think 
of the difference it would make if you had five fingers instead of 
four fingers and a thumb. Imagine holding a knife or a needle 
and working with it under these conditions, and you will under- 
stand the advantage which man has over beasts. Third, man 
had a set of vocal organs which made it possible for him to de- 
velop a spoken language with which to express his emotions and 
his thoughts. These three things are the instruments with 
which men carved out their entire future and raised themselves, 
generation after generation, higher and higher above the 
brutes. 

Sooner or later — we have no record of the exact passage of 
time — man discovered the use of fire. Perhaps he first learned 



THE USE OF FIRE 3 

its uses by observing tlie effects of forest fires kindled by 
lightning, or by noting the changes brought about by hot lava 
from volcanoes. Certainly sometime, long, long ago, he The use of 
learned how to start his own fires by rubbing two ^^^ 
sticks together or by striking one stone against another. 

Imagine the scene in the forest. Slowly the hunter kindles 
his fire. First it is a pile of smoldering leaves, then sticks and 
chips are added to the blaze. Finally it is a roaring flame. 
Men and women and children huddle around it. The flesh of 
some wild animal' is roasted. Far into the night, the group con- 
tinues its feasting, singing, and yelling. 

By this time, men had also learned to make tools — 
hammers, knives, axes, and spearheads — of stone. Often they 
used the smooth stones which they found in the forest or on The inven- 
the hillside without any attempt to change them; but some- ^^°"^ °^ *°°^^ 
times they chipped them till the edges were sharp, or bound 
them with twigs or with strips of skin to wooden handles and 
kept them for future use. . With such tools men had an enormous 
advantage over the lower animals. Now they could kill their 
prey by attacking at a distance; they could fight successfully 
with beasts much stronger than man. 

In the hillside caves and in the mud banks along the rivers in 
England, France, Germany, and Switzerland, for the last seventy- 
five years the scholars of Europe have been finding The cave 
evidences of the life of men who made the first rude imple- ™®° 
ments of stone. Can you picture to yourself the life of one of 
these early cave men? There he sits at the mouth of his cave 
with his wife and his children about him. He is making himself 
a spearhead or an axhead, or he is cutting up the carcass of a 
reindeer or of a wild ox which he has killed in the forest. While 
he works, his wife is scraping hides, making them ready for 
clothing or sewing them together with a needle of bone and with 
thongs made of hide or of plant fibers. Deep in the cave are all 
sorts of litter — bones of animals killed in the chase, broken 
hammers and chisels and spearheads, and tattered skins. On 
the walls of the cave are scratched pictures of the reindeer, the 



4 THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY BEGAN 

buffalo, the boar, and the mammoth — animals which the cave 
man hunted. 

When night came, if the day's hunting was good, the cave man 
kindled his fire and roasted the flesh of the animals which he had 
killed. When he and his family were gorged with food, they 
crept into the cave and slept, protected from the attacks of wild 
animals by the smoldering fire which burned through the night. 
These were the men of what we call the Rough Stone Age. 
Hundreds of years passed and great changes took place in the 
The Polished continents of Europe and Asia and Africa before man ad- 
Stone Age vanced into the next stage — the period which we call the 
PoHshed Stone Age. The men of the Rough Stone Age had 
made their tools of stone by chipping the edges. They had used 
the bones or tusks of animals without fashioning them for special 
uses. The men of the Polished Stone Age learned the trick of 
grinding and drilling. They polished the surfaces and the 
edges of their knives and their hatchets. They drilled holes 
in their axheads and their needles; they made harpoons and 
fishhooks of ivory and of bone. They chopped down trees and 
used them for building houses. They made canoes, or dugouts, 
by burning out the centers of logs. They succeeded in taming 
some of the wild animals. They learned how to cultivate edible 
grasses — wheat, oats, and barley — and how to spin the fibers 
of flax into thread which they wove into cloth. 

The men of the Polished Stone Age were organized into groups 
of families which recognized a common ancestor. Such groups 
are commonly known as clans. The people of a clan lived to- 
gether in a village under a chief who governed them in times of 
peace and led them in war. 

In many parts of Europe, and in valleys of rivers in Asia and 
in Africa, we find evidences of the life which the men of the 
The lake Polished Stone Age lived. In some places their houses 
dwellers were bmlt of turf or of clay; in others they were bmlt of 
wood. At the bottom of lakes in Switzerland, for instance, 
many thousands of piles — stripped trunks of trees — have been 
found driven into the mud. Among these piles there were heaps 




Village of Lake Dwellers 



6 THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY BEGAN 

of rubbish — stone implements and fragments of pottery, rem- 
nants of furniture and clothing — from which we gather the 
story of the life of the lake dwellers. Their houses were built 
on the piles and could be reached from the shore only by 
crossing the water. The lake dwellers had canoes for this 
purpose, but some of their villages were also connected with 
the shore by a long causeway or bridge built on piles. In 
front of the houses were platforms where tlie women o.it 
while grinding wheat, oats, or barley into flour, or spinning flax 
and weaving it into cloth. They prepared the food for the house- 
hold in bowls and dishes of pottery, using knives and ladles 
made of stone. 

In the. pastures and woodlands along the shores of the lake the 
boys took care of herds of cattle and goats and sheep. Oxen 
were used as beasts of burden. They drew great clumsy carts 
with solid wooden wheels. Men were no longer dependent upon 
wild animals alone for their food and their clothing. They had 
domestic animals which helped them to carry their burdens and 
which furnished tliem with meat. They had crops of grain and 
of flax. 

These men had advanced a long way on the road to civili- 
zation, but they lacked a knowledge of how to use one of the 
The first use greatest gifts of nature — they knew nothing of the value 
of metals Qf metals, of copper, tin, iron, and lead. No one knows 
just when or where men first began to use these metals. Some- 
time, at least five or six thousand years ago, perhaps even much 
earlier, some one discovered that much better tools could be 
made out of copper than out of stone. That discovery was 
really the beginning of our present civilization. Later on, men 
melted copper and tin together and thus made bronze, which 
was harder than copper, and better suited for weapons and other 
utensils. Still later iron, gold and silver, and other metals came 
into use. 

Only one thing more was necessary: that was that men should 
keep regular written records of their doings; when that was 
done, the real history of the world began. 



TOPICS AND REFERENCES 



TOPICS AND REFERENCES 



Suggestive Topics. — d) Compare the tools and utensils in your own 
home with those used by primitive man. (2) Describe the way a baby learns 
to talk and compare it with the way prehistoric man probably developed his 
language. (3) Was the American Indian whom the English settlers found, 
more highly civilized than the men described in this chapter? (4J Why are 
the domestic animals considered a sign of civilization? (5) Examine the 
stones in the road on your way to school and imagine how you would convert 
'tiiem into hammers, axes, knives, and other tools. (6) Why did the lake 
dwellers build their houses on piles in the water rather than along the shore? 

Search Topics. — (i) An Account of a Visit to a Collection of Primi- 
tive Tools. — (2) The Life of the Cave Men. Sollas, Ancient Hunters, 
pp. 142-148; Clodd, Primitive Man, pp. 48-60. — (3) The Way Savages 
Make Fire. Tylor, Anthropology, pp. 260-264; Clodd, Primitive Man, pp. 
48-50. — (4) The Lake Dwellers. Clodd, Primitive Man, pp. 131-145. — 
(5) Wo.man's Share in Primitive Clxture. Mason, Woman's Share in 
Primitive Culture, pp. 276-282. 

General Reading. — Edward Clodd, The Story of Primitive Man, Appleton, 
1895. O. T. Mason, Woman's Slmre in Primitive Culture, Appleton, 1894. 
W. J. Sollas, Ancient Hunters, Macmillan, 191 1. E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, 
Appleton, 1 88 1. 




!□□ 



CHAPTER II 
THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

From the very earliest period of which we have any record, 
the people who lived in the valleys of rivers have made the most 
rapid progress. If you think of the difference in natural ^j^^ g^eue of 
resources between the land along the banks of rivers and ancient civil- 
the land in the highlands or deserts, you will understand ^^^ '"" 
why. Furthermore, the men who live in warm or temperate 
climates have always had larger chances than those who live in 
regions which are either too hot or too cold. It is not at all 
surprising, therefore, to find that the oldest civilizations in the 
world were developed in the valleys of southern Asia, north'ern 
Africa, and southern Europe. 

If you look at a map of the Eastern Hemisphere you will see a 
great sweep of country stretching west from the Plateau of Iran 
to the Atlantic Ocean, bound together by numerous natural 
highroads and by several inland seas. In the eastern part of this 
region lies the valley of the twin rivers Tigris and Euphrates. 
In the lower part of this valley, crops of grain grew in abun- 
dance, and herds of cattle fed on the grass five or six thousand 
years ago. The rivers made traveUng easy; consequently trade 
and commerce flourished, and the comforts of civilized life fol- 
lowed in their path. 

West of the Euphrates valley lies the desert of Arabia, and 
west of that is the narrow strip of land called Syria, which 
borders on the sea. At its northern end this strip connects with 
the valley of the Euphrates and thus it forms the natural high- 
road between that region and the valley of the Nile. 

The valley of the Nile, in Egypt, is one of the most fertile coun- 
tries in the world. Once a year the river floods the fields and 
makes them ready for bounteous harvests. The climate is mild 

9 



lO THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

and invariable, the air is clear and dry, the sun shines almost 
every day in the year. Since the Nile valley had all these ad- 
vantages, it was destined by nature to become the seat of one of 
the earliest known civilizations in the world. 

No one has been able to determine exactly how far back the 

written records of the countries in the valley of the Nile and in 

The begin- ^^^ valley of the Tigris-Euphrates extend. One thing, 

ning of however, is certain : the history of these countries can be 

^ °^^ traced back at least five or six thousand years. 

In the earliest historical period, in both regions, the people 
were divided into a number of small tribes. Each tribe believed 
itself descended from a common ancestor, and had its own 
religion. Each had its own chief and lived in a small village or 
town and cultivated grain and herded cattle in the neighboring 
fields. Wars for revenge and for conquest were constant. First 
one tribe and then another gained the upper hand. Sometimes 
two or three tribes united against a common enemy. In the 
end, some chief more powerful than any of the others gained 
control over a number of tribes and assimied the title and powers 
of a king. 

The earliest fixed date in history is the year 4241 B.C. In 

that year the ^Egyptians who lived in the region of the Nile 

The history Delta adopted a calendar in which the length of the year 

of ancient was fixed by the time which it takes the earth to revolve 

^^^ around the sun. Previous to that time, men had reckoned 

time by observing the phases of the moon. But the moon 

calendar does not divide the year evenly. So the Egyptians, 

six thousand years ago, determined to divide the year into 

twelve months of 30 days each and added five feast days to 

make the year complete. Since then the only real improvement 

in the calendar has been the introduction of the leap year. 

At the time of the introduction of the solar calendar, Egypt 
was divided into two kingdoms. One of them embraced the 
land in the region of the Delta; the other, the land in the middle 
course of the stream farther to the south. Some six or seven 
hundred years later, all of Egypt was united into a single kingdom 



MAN IN THE TIGRIS-EUPHRATES VALLEY ll 

with its capital at Memphis, situated about one hundred miles 
from the sea. 

For a thousand years and more, Memphis remained the capital 
of Egypt. It would be useless for us to attempt to study all the 
wars and all the changes which took place in the kingdom during 
these hundreds and hundreds of years. At the end of this long 
period, the kings of Egypt established themselves in a new 
capital halfway up the river, in a city called Thebes. The new 
kings of Egypt were warriors and conquerors. They made their 
way across the Isthmus of Suez into Syria. They fought with 
the people from the valley of the Tigris-Euphrates. They con- 
quered the tribes who inhabited the African deserts and moun- 
tains near Egypt. Sometimes they were conquered in turn. 
Whenever new land was conquered, merchants and traders en- 
tered, and the arts and crafts of Egypt were spread. 

The history of Egypt as an independent country lasted for 
three thousand five hundred years. In 525 B.C., the land was 
conquered by the Persians, and from that day to this the 
valley of the Nile has always been governed by some foreign 
nation — Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Arabian, Turkish, or 
English. 

The history of the people who inhabited the valley of the Tigris- 
Euphrates is much more compUcated than that of Egypt. At 

the very dawn of history, in the region nearest the Per- „ 

•^ , . 1 Man in the 

sian Gulf, a race called Sumenans developed the arts of xigris-Eu- 

civilization. More than six thousand years ago, they had Pirates 
learned how to write and how to keep a record of their 
doings. They tilled their fields and tended their flocks. They 
carried on trade with the neighboring peoples and sailed their 
ships on the Persian Gulf. 

Sometime about 4000 B.C. the Sumerians were conquered by 
a horde of barbarians from Arabia. These invaders, whom we 
call Babylonians, established themselves in little towns and vil- 
lages, and lived by cultivating the land. Later on the towns 
made war on one another. In the end, the city of Babylon be- 
came the most important of the cities and its ruler became the 



12 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

ruler of all the land. The name of just one of these kings should 
be remembered — Hammurabi — who lived about 2000 B.C. 
He built great irrigating canals for the benefit of the farmers, 
and encouraged trade and industry throughout the land. He 
established a regular system of government and issued an elab- 
orate code of laws. These laws are not unlike the Laws of Moses, 
which were made for the government of the Hebrews after they 
entered the Promised Land. 

For nearly a thousand years, the kings of Babylon ruled the 
people in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Then they were con- 
quered by the Assyrians, a fierce, cruel race of hunters and war- 
riors who lived on the slopes of the mountains east and north of 
the Tigris. Nineveh was their chief city. After they had sub- 
jugated the Babylonians, they carried their wars north, east, and 
west, until all the peoples from the Caspian Sea to the Mediter- 
ranean and even the Egyptians wei*e conquered. 

In 606 B.C., the kingdom of the Assyrians was destroyed. In 
that year, an army made up of Medes and Persians and Baby- 
lonians captured the city of Nineveh and destroyed it. Most of 
the advantages of the conquest fell to the Babylonians, but the 
rule of the Babylonians lasted only a few years. In 538 B.C., 
they were conquered by Cyrus, the great king of the Persians, 
of whom we shall hear more later on. 

The history of the kings and rulers of Egypt and of Babylonia 
and Assyria is of very little importance. It is the life of the 
The life of people — their language and their literature, their daily 
the people jjfg g^^d customs, their agriculture and their manufactures, 
their art and science and religion — that we must try to under- 
stand. For three or four thousand years, men and women in 
both countries cultivated the land, carried on trade and com- 
merce, transacted business with each other,' and traveled into 
distant lands. In the end, the people of both countries were 
conquered, but even to this day the things which they did four 
or five thousand years ago are still remembered because the 
Egyptians and Babylonians and Assyrians were the first nations 
to rise from barbarism to civilization. From them the later 



EGYPTIAN AND BABYLONIAN WRITING 1 3 

civilized nations learned many of the things which are part of 
the life which we are living to-day. 

Practically everything that we know about the Egj^tians and 
the Babylonians and Assyrians we have learned from two sources. 
In both countries there was a system of writing; and Egyptian and 
records of the history of the country, and of the life of the Babylonian 
people were copied into books. Besides, in both countries ^" ^^^ 
there are still remains of buildings — temples and palaces and 
monuments — from which we learn much about the life of the 
people. On the walls of these ruins are lengthy inscriptions 
which tell of the acts of the kings and nobles while they were 
alive. 

The writing and the books of the Egyptians and the Baoy- 
lonians were altogether different from the writing and the books 
of to-day. The Egyptians used a system of picture writing 

which we call hieroglyphics. Thus the sign T^ stood for the 

word man, the sign %^ stood for woman, (^ for sun, and y^^^ for 

moon. Later on these signs were used to express syllables and 
even the letters which correspond to the letters of the alphabet 
which we use to-day. With these signs the Egyptians carved 
their stories on the walls of their temples and other buildings, 
or wrote them on rolls of paper made from the papyrus reed 
which grew along the banks of the Nile. These rolls of papyrus 
were the only books which the Egyptians had. 

The writing of the Babylonians and Assyrians is much more 
difficult to understand than that of the Egyptians. Originally 
it also was a form of picture writing, but the picture signs were 
gradually changed till they became a group of wedge-shaped 
characters, each group standing for a syllable. This kind of 
writing is known as cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing. Like 
the Egyptians, the Babylonians and Assyrians carved their in- 
scriptions on the walls of their buildings. They also made 
thousands and thousands of records on clay tablets or clay 
cylinders with a sharp-pointed writing instrument. The tablets 

W. Anc. Civ. — 2 



14 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

and cylinders were then baked until they became as hard- as 
modern bricks. These were the books of the Babylonians and 
Assyrians. They were preserved in people's houses; they were 
kept as records by merchants and traders; they were stored 
by the thousands in libraries just as we keep large collections 
of books to-day. 

For hundreds and hundreds of years, after the destruction of 
the Egyptian and the Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, no 
one was able to read the records of these ancient peoples. Then, 
about a hundred years ago, a Frenchman discovered a great stone 
tablet since called the Rosetta Stone because it was found near 
the modern town of Rosetta in Eg5^t. On this an inscription 
was written in hieroglyphics and in Greek, which led to the un- 
derstanding of the ancient Egyptian writing. In a similar way, 
scholars discovered a method of reading the Babylonian writing. 
As a result, we can, to-day, interpret once more the records 
preserved on the ruined walls of the buildings, and in the Egyptian 
and Babylonian books. In consequence, we know a great deal 
about these ancient peoples; about the way they made their 
living, about their home life and their government, about their 
religion and their science, about their influence on the rest of the 
world. 

In both Egypt and Babylonia, there were various social classes. 

First of all, there was the king and the members of the royal 

Social family. The king was regarded by the people as a being 

The Royal ^^^ above ordinary mortals. He was the representative of 

family the gods on earth. In Egypt, the pharaoh, as the king 

was called, was addressed by his subjects as the "Good God" or 

the "Great God." He was the chief of the army. His very 

word was law. He lived in a magnificent palace with his wives 

and sons and daughters. Hundreds of courtiers and servants 

and slaves waited upon him. All taxes were paid to his treasurers. 

His governors and tax gatherers were to be found in every 

city and province. When he died a great pyramid or some 

other imposing monument was erected in which the people 

deposited his earthly remains. 



NOBLES AND PRIESTS 1 5 

Just below the king and the royal family, there were numerous 
nobles who served the king in the army and assisted him in 
ruling the people. They were the owners of most of the Nobles and 
land. This land was cultivated for them by slaves and P"ests 
hireUngs, or was rented out in small parcels to farmers who paid 
rent in grain and cattle and other produce of the fields. 

On a level with the nobles were the chief members of the priest- 
hood. They, too, possessed extensive landed estates from which 
they drew revenues for the building and maintenance of the 
temples which were erected for the worship of the gods. The 
priests were the teachers, as well as the servants of the gods. 
They kept the temple records and were the chief men of science. 
They were the principal physicians. They were the custodians 
of the tombs, and kept the records of the dead. 

A third class of Egyptian society was made up of the merchants 
and shopkeepers, independent landholders, and skilled craftsmen. 
These men were in comparatively comfortable circum- Merchants 
stances. They led peaceful, uneventful lives. Their and farmers 
homes were not as magnificent as those of the priests and the 
nobles, but they had plenty of food to eat and comfortable 
clothing to wear. 

The great mass of the people, however, were hard working, ill- 
fed, and ill-clothed workmen. They tilled the fields of the 
nobles, or spent long weary hours in the shops. Their 
houses were the rudest hovels. Men and women and 
children went bareheaded and barefooted. Their only clothing 
was a pair of rough cotton drawers for the men and a simple 
cotton shirt for the women. Their daily food consisted of a few 
onions and beans and coarse cakes of wheat or of barley. Oc- 
casionally they were able to vary this diet with a bit of dried fish 
or with apples or dates or figs. They worked from sunrise to ^ 
sunset and often far into the night. These are the men who 
built the great Egyptian and Babylonian temples and palaces 
and tombs. They knew the lash of the whip of the taskmaster, 
for they were constantly beaten at their work. "It was the 
stick that built the pyramids, dug the canals, won the victories 



1 6 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

for the conquering pharaohs, and made Egypt a great manu- 
facturing nation, " we are told. 

Slaves were the lowest class in ancient, as well as in modern, 
society. Usually slaves were captives taken in war; but a man 
or woman might be sold into slavery if he failed to pay 
his debts. The treatment of the slaves depended upon 
the character of the master; sometimes their lot was easy; 
more often it was extremely hard. They were used as household 
servants, to take care of the goods of their masters, or to work 
in the fields. 

The large majority of the people in both Egypt and Baby- 
lonia were engaged in farming. Each spring, thousands of men 
Industry and and women plowed the fields with a plow which consisted 
commerce ^f g^ sharpened stick fastened to a rude handle. The seed 
was then scattered in the furrows by hand. During the summer 
there was plenty of labor — the cattle, the sheep, and the swine 
had to be tended. In fall, the crops were cut with hand 
sickles and gathered into the barns. Here wheat, barley, and 
oats were thrashed and winnowed, and stored for the winter. 

Perhaps in books or in one of the great museums you have 
seen pictures of Eg)^ptians or Babylonians in workshops. Im- 
agine the life of these people. In the towns, the houses of the 
merchants and nobles were fairly comfortable; but the homes 
of the workmen were miserable, dirty, one-story huts. Men 
and women and children slept and ate and did their work in one 
room. 

In the market place, in the center of the town or on the banks 
of the river, cattle from the country were herded and killed by 
the butchers and offered for sale. Food of all kinds — vege- 
tables, grain, fruit, and fish — was piled in great baskets, and 
men and women handled it and shouted and quarreled with the 
owners trying to get the best bargains they could. Clothing of 
wool and linen and cotton was displayed against the walls of 
buildings or hung on racks in front of the shops. Under gaudy 
colored awnings, merchants who had traveled in far countries 
offered costly jewels and works of gold and silver to the richer 




Egyptian Market Scene 
17 



1 8 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

citizens who were able to pay the price. Objects made of ivory 
and curious woods gathered in India or in the heart of Africa 
were also displayed. In the side streets were confectioners and 
bakers and barbers and sandal makers. Carpenters and masons 
and woodworkers stood in the market place waiting for jobs. 
Here and there, all over the city, were wine shops and restaurants 
where merchants gathered and made bargains over their food 
and drink. From early morning to sunset, the city was alive 
with the noise and bustle of trade. 

Day after day, boats on the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates 
departed carr5dng cargoes Consigned to other cities on the river 
or to cities in distant lands. Across the Red Sea and the Medi- 
terranean, out into the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, ven- 
turesome sailors and merchants pursued their voyages in quest 
of products which the king and his nobles were willing to buy. 
Across the deserts and mountains of Africa and of Asia caravans 
wended their way carrying silks and jewels, gold and silver and 
ivory. Out in the country, the king and his nobles hunted the 
lion and the rhinoceros, and all sorts of smaller game. At night 
the cities were often gay with lanterns. In the houses of the 
well-to-do people there was feasting and singing and dancing. 

In Babylonia and Egypt, in earliest times, each province and 
each city had its own gods. Their great temples were built on 
Ancient re- ^^^^^ overlooking the city, or in a specially reserved section 
ligious across the river. In later times the chief gods were recog- 

nized as rulers over the entire country; the king was their 
chief representative on earth. Most of these gods were per- 
sonifications of the forces of nature and the heavenly bodies — 
the sun which warms the land and makes it fruitful, the moon, 
the stars, and the planets. Each god had his own temple in 
which the priests offered sacrifices of animals or of the fruits of 
the earth. 

In both Egypt and Babylonia, the sun god was the chief 
deity. One of his names in Egypt was Osiris. According to 
the legend, he was the god who had reclaimed the land from 
savagery and had given the people their laws. But his wicked 



TEMPLES OF THE GODS 1 9 

brother, Set, the God of darkness, was jealous of his power and 
killed him and threw his body into the Nile. Isis, the goddess 
of the moon, the faithful wife of Osiris, sought and found the 
body of her husband and restored it to life. Once more Set at- 
tacked his brother Osiris and forced him to retire to the Land 
of the Dead. Osiris and Isis had a son, Horus. When he grew 
up he killed Set, the slayer of his father, and thereafter, Horus 
ruled as god of the Land of the Living, and Osiris ruled as god 
of the Land of the Dead. 

In Babylonia, the chief god was Marduk. He, too, was god 
of the sun. Beside him there were numberless other deities 
associated with the moon, the stars, and the planets. The 
Babylonian priests were especially interested in the movements 
of the heavenly bodies, because they believed that these move- 
ments were influenced by the will of the gods. They watched 
the rising and the setting of the stars and the planets, the eclipses 
and comets; they believed that these things affected the lives 
of people; they read the fate of mortals in the stars. 

Egyptian temples were enormous structures covering many 
acres of ground. The high outer walls were pierced by one or 
two small gateways which led into a great courtyard, Temples of 
open to the sky, which the people were allowed to enter. *^® sods 
Beyond it, only those engaged in the religious ceremonies might 
go. The real temple consisted of a series of massive pillars some- 
times covering hundreds of square feet. At the end of these 
pillars was the small, dark Holy of Holies — the dwelling place 
of the god. Every morning and every evening, the priests pro- 
ceeded to the Holy of Holies and made proper sacrifices, and 
offered up prayers to the god. 

The Babylonian temple was altogether different in construc- 
tion. Inside the courtyard was a great stepped pyramid some- 
times several hundred feet high. Along the steps of this pyramid 
wound the processions of the priests bearing the sacrifices to 
the gods. At the very top was the altar where the priests ad- 
ministered their rites in full view of the multitude assembled 
below. 



20 THE fflSTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

The ancient Egyptians believed that the god Osiris ruled over 
the Land of the Dead. In his presence every soul of a departed 
Life after Egyptian must appear on judgment day to give an account 
death ^f j^jg jjfg^ g^^ before this judgment day, the soul had to 

take a long journey through the region ruled over by Set, the 
wicked god of darkness. Here were all sorts of pitfalls; and all 
sorts of monsters guarded the way. Only the protection of the 
servants of Osiris, and the prayers and sacrifices of the living, 
could save the soul from destruction. Furthermore, the soul, to 
enjoy eternal bliss in the kingdom of Osiris, must be rejoined by 
the body. If the body was destroyed, the soul must wander 
forever between heaven and earth. 

That is why the Egyptians took such care of the bodies of 
their dead. Weeks and weeks were spent in embalming. Then 
the bodies were wrapped in narrow strips of linen, gummed and 
saturated with spices and other preservatives. In this way, the 
Eg3^tians prepared their mummies, hundreds of which are in 
existence to-day. When the process was over, the bodies were 
placed in elaborate wooden or stone coffins and carried to the 
City of the Dead. In the coffins all sorts of religious emblems, 
charms, and amulets were placed, to protect the soul during its 
wanderings on the journey to the Land of the Dead. 

Such precautions as these, however, were taken only for the 
richest and most important Egyptians. The poor man had to be 
content with much less elaborate preparations for his funeral, 
such as was fitting to his station in life. 

Among the religious emblems placed in the coffin of the richest 
and most important people was included a copy of the Book of 
the Dead. This book contained prayers and passwords, hymns, 
and incantations, which the soul must use on its journey to the 
land of the blest. It described the judgment of Osiris. It con- 
tained the answers that the soul must make when it appeared 
before Osiris on judgment day. 

The Book of the Dead is the most interesting book which has 
come down to us from the ancient Egyptians. It is a sort of 
Pilgrim's Progress written four thousand years ago. The 



EGYPTIAN AND BABYLONIAN LITERATURE : .21 

Egyptian priests wrote hundreds of other rehgious poems and 
other books on religion. Indeed, religion was the chief sub- 
ject of Egyptian literature, but there were books on Egyptian and 
other subjects — tales of love and adventure, not unlike Babylonian 
those in The Arabian Nights, books on arithmetic, ^ ®^^ ^^^ 
geometry, surveying, navigation, and surgery, and books which 
told of the adventures and good deeds of the nobles and 
kings. 

The Babylonians and Assyrians, too, wrote thousands of books. 
In all the important cities in the Tigris-Euphrates valley there 
were temple libraries in which these books written on clay tablets 
were stored. They contain the laws and the histories of the 
Babylonian and Assyrian kings. For instance, there is the Code 
of Hammurabi which has already been mentioned, and the 
record of his deeds. Religious books were also common in 
Babylonia. Like those of the Egyptians, they contain prayers, 
hymns, and incantations- to ward off evil spirits. The Baby- 
lonian priests also wrote books on astrology and astronomy^ and 
stories of the adventures of the gods. There were books on 
arithmetic, geography, botany, and zoology, and books about 
agriculture, mining, and trade. Most interesting of all were two 
long poems, one of which told of the creation of the earth by the 
god Marduk, while the other described the adventures of the 
Babylonian hero Gilgamesh. One of these adventures included 
the story of a great flood sent by the gods. This story is very 
much hke the story of Noah which is told in the sixth, seventh, 
and eighth chapters of the book of Genesis; therefore it is easy 
to get an idea of what the book was like. 

In Babylonia, because stone was scarce, even the great palaces 
and temples were built of bricks. But the walls were briUiantly 
colored, and sometimes plated with thin slabs of bronze Architecture 
or gold. In Assyria, although there was plenty of stone, ^^^ ^^^ 
the architects followed the example of Babylonia and built their 
palaces and temples of brick. The walls were then covered with 
slabs of stone which were ornamented with sculpture and with 
inscriptions. The sculpture of the Assyrians was especially in- 



2 2 , THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

teresting. Some of the reproductions of their Hons and tigers 
and other wild animals are very hfe-Hke. 

The Eg3^tian builders and sculptors were much more clever 
than the Babylonians and Assyrians. Indeed, the ancient 
Egyptians were among the greatest builders the world has ever 
seen. Study the reproductions and pictures of their tombs and 
temples in a museum — the great pyramids for instance. Re- 
member that these enormous buildings were erected almost 
five thousand years ago. Look at the reproductions of the great 
Egyptian temples, which covered acres and acres of ground, 
and contained hundreds of massive pillars. Study the carving 
and the painting which decorated the walls. Examine the 
pictures which decorate the mummy cases, and the great statues 
of the gods and kings and sphinxes. These columns and 
carvings and paintings have existed for years almost un- 
numbered, and yet they are fresh and interesting to-day. 

Great as were the achievements of the Egyptians and Baby- 
lonians and Assyrians, their influence on later European civiliza- 
The land of tion would have been no greater than that of the ancient 
Syria peoples of China and of India, if there had not been a sea- 

faring people to carry their influence to the west. 

The natural meeting place between Egypt and Babylonia and 
Assyria was the narrow strip of territory lying between the 
Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian desert. This land is com- 
monly known as Syria. For hundreds of years it was the battle 
ground of the nations. First one people and then another con- 
quered it, always leaving something in the way of arts and 
civilization behind. 

On the coast, looking out over the Mediterranean, were a 
number of cities inhabited by a race of sailors and merchants 
Phoenician called the Phoenicians. Just when these cities were settled 
commerce nobody knows. It used to be said that the Phoenicians 
were the first people to sail their ships on the waters of the 
Mediterranean; but in recent years discoveries have been made 
which seem to prove that even before the days of the Phoenicians, 
a race of men from the island of Crete was trading among the 



PHCENICIAN COMMERCE 



23 



islands and along the coast. The story of the Cretans will, how- 
ever, be told in the next chapter; meanwhile there are a few 
facts about the Phoenicians that ought to be known. 

The two chief cities of Phoenicia were Sidon and Tyre. These 
two cities reached the height of their glory about 1000 years be- 
fore the birth of Christ. Into their 
market places the goods- of Baby- 
lonia and Egypt, and of the islands 
and the coasts of the Mediterranean, 
were constantly making their way. 
Read the twenty-seventh chapter of 
Ezekiel in the Bible in order to get 
some idea of the extent of this trade. 
The "cedars from Lebanon" and the 
"oak of Bashan," "fine linen with 
broidered work from Egypt," "blue 
and purple dyes from the isles," 
"silver, iron, tin and lead" from 
Spain, "horses and mules" from 
Armenia, "emeralds, purple, and 
broidered work and fine linen and 
coral and agate" from Syria, "wheat 
and honey and oil" from Palestine, 
precious stones 
of trade. 

Ranging from the plateau of Iran to the islands of the Atlantic, 
these traders of ancient times gathered their raw materials, con- 
verted them into finished products, and sold them again at an 
advanced price. They were the greatest sailors of antiquity. 
Their ships were propelled by oars and by sails. When the wind 
was favorable the oarsmen rested; when the wind failed or blew 
from the wrong quarter, the sail was furled and the oars were 
again put into use. In this way, journeys which carried them 
from one end of the Mediterranean to the other were accom- 
plished in two or three weeks. On land the Phoenicians traveled 
in caravans. They crossed the mountains and the deserts, and 




Phcenicia and Palestine 



spices and gold and 
from Arabia, were only a few of the articles 



^4 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

made their way into the heart of Asia and of Africa. Wherever 
men were willing to buy or to sell they were not afraid to go. 

The Phoenicians established themselves in colonies all over 
the ancient world. They had settlements in Cyprus and the 
Phoenician ^gean islands, in Sicily and Sardinia and Corsica, in 
colonies northern Africa and in southern Europe as far west as the 
peninsula of Spain. Carthage in northern Africa and Gades 
(Cadiz) in Spain were the most famous of these colonies. Each 
colony was a trading station where the finished products of 
Egypt and Babylonia and Syria were bartered for the raw ma- 
terials of the natives. Thus the Phoenicians spread the results of 
Egyptian and Babylonian civilization all over the known world. 

The nearest neighbors of the Phoenicians were the' Hebrews. 
Originally, the Hebrews were a race of wandering shepherds on 
The the edge of the Arabian desert. About 2000 B.C., under 

Hebrews ^^le leadership of Abraham, the first of the patriarchs, they 
migrated into the country south and east of the river Jordan. 
Here, for some five hundred years, they tended their flocks and 
obeyed the orders of the heads of their families, men like Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob, whom we call patriarchs. 

Later they wandered south into EgjqDt where they dwelt in 
the land of Goshen on the borders of the Red Sea. Then came 
the time when the Pharaohs "set over them taskmasters to 
afflict them with burdens," and the people clamored for 
relief. 

Under the leadership of Moses they escaped from Egypt and 
wandered once more in the desert until they finally came into the 
Promised Land. For two or three centuries more, in scattered 
communities, under leaders called Judges^ the Hebrews fought 
with their neighbors until they were finally united as a single 
nation under a king. 

The first king of the Hebrews was Saul, a mighty warrior, who 
lived about 1000 B.C. David, "the sweet singer of Israel" suc- 
ceeded him and was, in turn, succeeded by his son, Solomon, the 
greatest king of the Hebrews. Solomon extended the borders of 
his kingdom till it included all of Syria except Phoenicia. He 



THE IDEA OF ONE GOD 25 

built the great temple at Jerusalem. He opened up for his 
people wide opportunities for trade. 

Soon after the death of Solomon, the land was again divided 
into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and war with the 
neighboring nations began. In 722 B.C., the kingdom of Israel 
was destroyed by the Assyrians and the people were scattered 
never to be united again. In 586 B.C., the kingdom of Judah was 
destroyed. The people were carried off into the "Babylonian 
Captivity" where they remained for a number of years. Then 
they were allowed to return to Jerusalem, but they remained a 
subject nation and never established their political freedom 
again. The Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans were 
successively their masters. Time and again they revolted, but 
each time the revolt was suppressed. Finally, in 70 a.d., the 
city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and the people 
were scattered all over the world. 

The Hebrews would have been one of the least important 
nations of antiquity if it had not been for one thing. They 
produced nothing in the way of art, science, industry, or The idea of 
commerce that left a trace upon the history of the world. °°® ^°^ 
They were a race of shepherds and farmers. Their cities were 
small and unimportant. They erected no great buildings like 
those of the Egyptians or Babylonians. They had no trade Hke 
that of the Phoenicians. And yet, when Abraham came into 
Syria he brought with him an idea which was destined to change 
the history of the world. 

The God of the ancient Hebrews was Jehovah. They believed 
that He alone was Creator and Ruler of the universe. To Him 
the people offered prayers and sacrifices. He put his command 
on Abraham: "Walk before me and be perfect" and ever after 
the people held Him up as a great moral ideal. Often, in suc- 
ceeding generations, "the children of Israel remembered not the 
Lord their God"; they "built altars for all the host of heaven, 
the sun, the moon, and the planets"; they "dealt with famiKar 
spirits and wizards " ; they used "divinations and enchantments"; 
but the idea of Jehovah, the Creator of the universe and the 



26 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

God of loving kindness, persisted. There were always patriarchs 
and prophets to call the people back to their ideal. In the end, the 
worship of Jehovah triumphed. Sacrifices became an abomina- 
tion; righteousness, love, and charity were acknowledged as the 
only proper way in which to worship God. Thus the ideal of the 
Hebrews became the ideal upon which the prevailing religions of 
the western world have been constructed. 

About the year 550 B.C., the peoples of Egypt and Babylonia 
and Assyria and all the other peoples of western Asia were con- 
Coming of quered by the Medes and Persians, a hill people who lived 
the Persians [y^ |-}^g highlands east of the Tigris River. They began their 
career of conquest under Cyrus in 553 B.C. In less than fifty 
years they had extended their empire until it reached from the 
Mediterranean to the Indus River, from the Persian Gulf to the 
Black and Caspian seas — a region almost as large as the present 
United States. 

Fifty years later, under the great king Darius, this enormous 

empire was organized as no empire had ever been organized be- 

Or anization ^°^^- '^^^ entire territory was divided into some twenty 

of their provinces called satrapies. In each province there were three 

empire officers: (i) a satrap or governor, (2) a general, and (3) a 

secretary. In addition, Darius sent out regular messengers to 

see that his ofl&cers did their duty, and to make regular reports 

to him. 

In various parts of the empire there were great roads for the 
convenience of the king's armies and messengers. Men from 
every country of antiquity were to be found on them. There 
were Persian soldiers and officials, Babylonian and Phoenician 
traders, farmers and shepherds from Asia Minor and Armenia, 
Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks. Great caravans with precious 
stones and spices from India and Arabia passed others coming 
with grain and cattle from the north. Travelers and idlers and 
peasants, men of every sort and condition, mingled on these 
roads. The ancient world of the East was a-mixing, the civiliza- 
tion of twenty-five centuries had finally reached its height. 
The height of Persian power marks the end of the period of 



FOUR THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY 



27 



ancient oriental civilization. The Persians tried to extend their em- 
pire westward into Greece. But the Greeks had already developed 
a newer and better civilization, and the attempt of the Persians 
failed. Nevertheless the Persians deserve to be remembered 
because they held back the invasion of the northern barbarians 
and because they were the first people to develop an empire 
controlled by military and civil leaders responsible to the king. 




Persian Sunjiicxs Bkixging Tribute to the King 
Bas-relief from Persepolis 



In the year 500 B.C., the world had already passed through 
three or four thousand years of history. Since that time less 
than two thousand five hundred years have passed. In ^out thou- 
500 B.C., the men of Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, and Persia sand years 
had already learned most of the arts of civihzation. Many ° ^ 

of the most important discoveries in the life of man had already 
been made. In all these countries, there were great cities with 
beautiful palaces and temples, adorned with sculpture and paint- 
ing, fitted with rugs and fine furniture, and filled with magnifi- 
cent ornaments made of ivory and silver and gold. 



28 THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT EAST 

Thousands of men and women were able to read and write. 
They kept careful records of their doings — their history, their 
business, and their social life. They studied history and science 
and literature. They devoted themselves to the worship of their 
gods. 

Merchants and manufacturers engaged in industry and trade. 
They made articles of gold and silver and ivory; they fashioned 
beautiful vases of pottery and glass; they wove cloth of silk, 
wool, linen, and cotton, and dyed it with many beautiful colors. 
They made implements of bronze and iron, and sold them at 
home and abroad. 

The rivers and seas were dotted with ships laden with all kinds 
of produce. The roads were thronged with soldiers and mer- 
chants and pilgrims. Even the mountains and waste places 
were visited by caravans of men with donkeys and camels bearing 
metals and precious stones to the great markets of Babylon and 
Nineveh and Thebes and Tyre and Jerusalem. 

In the fields, along the banks of the rivers, there were crops 
of wheat and barley and oats, and orchards of fruit. There were 
all sorts of domestic animals — dogs and horses and donkeys, 
cattle and sheep and hogs. There were carefully planned canals 
for irrigation, and great barns and storehouses in which the crops 
were thrashed and stored. 

In 500 B.C., the lands and peoples east of the Mediterranean 
had already fulfilled the greater part of their destiny. From that 
day to this they have made but little progress. The newer and 
more modern civilization belongs to the peoples of southern 
and western Europe — Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, 
and England — and it is to the history of these countries that 
our attention must now be turned. 

TOPICS AND REFERENCES 

Suggestive Topics. — (i) Compare the life of people in the river valleys 
in the United States with that of those in mountain regions and see whether 
the statements made at the beginning of this chapter are true. (2) Why is 
the history of the kings and rulers of Egypt and Babylonia less important to 



TOPICS AND REFERENCES ' 29 

us than the history of our own presidents? (3) What improvements have 
been made in agriculture since the days of the ancient Egyptians and Baby- 
lonians? How long ago were these improvements made? (4) Does the 
description of the market place in this chapter remind you of anything that 
you have ever seen? (5) Draw a map of the regions described in this chapter 
and show the natural highways along which merchants and traders would 
travel? (6) Why is Egypt often called "the gift of the Nile? " 

Search Topics. — (i) The Code of Hammurabi. Davis, Readings in 
Ancient History, Vol. i, No. 20. — (2) The Egyptian and Babylonian 
Systems of Writing. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 334-342; Sayce, 
Babylonians and Assyrians, pp. 208-230. — (3) Babylonian Trade and 
Commerce. Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians, pp. 151-167; Goodspeed, 
History of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 353-355. — (4) Egyptian Burial 
Customs. Herodotus, Bk. H, Chaps. 85-90; Breasted, History of Ancient 
Egyptians, pp. 36-37; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 306-327. — (5) The 
Babylonian Story of the Creation and the Flood. Botsford, Source 
Book, pp. 33-38; Goodspeed, History of Babylonians and Assyrians, pp. 31, 
116, 117. — (6) Phcenician Methods of Trade. Rawlinson, Phcenicia, 
pp. 153-164; Seignobos, Llistory of Ancient Civilization, pp. 80-84. 

General Reading. — Chas. Seignobos, History of Ancient Civilization, 
Scribner, 1906. J. H. Breasted, A History of the Anctent Egyptians, Scribner, 
1908. Adolf Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Macmillan, 1894. G. S. Good- 
speed, A History of the Babylonians a?id Assyrians, Scribner, 1902. A. H. 
Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians, Scribner, 1899. George Rawlinson, The 
Story of Phoenicia, Putnam, 1890. George Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, 
4 Vols., Murray, 1859. W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History, Vol. I, 
Allyn & Bacon, 1912. G. W. & L. S. Botsford, Source Book of Ancient His- 
tory, Macmillan, 1912. 



W. Anc. Civ. — 3 



CHAPTER III 

GREEK CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION 

Thus far the story of ancient civilizations has been told only 

of Egypt and western Asia previous to the year 500 B.C. But the 

Land of the peoples of southern Europe had also been steadily develop- 

Greeks jj^g their own civilization for at least fifteen hundred or two 

thousand years before that. 

A glance at the map will show that southern Europe consists 
of three great peninsulas which extend far out into the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. The easternmost of these peninsulas is Greece. 
Greece itself is connected with Asia by a series of hundreds of 
islands which dot the ^Egean Sea. These islands lie so near 
together that a sailor can easily journey from Asia to Europe 
without once losing sight of land. Crete, the largest of the islands, 
is located at the southern end of the iEgean. From Crete, the 
sailor who was willing to venture out across the open water could 
easily make his way to Egypt where he would find the oldest 
cities in the world. 

The ancient Babylonians and Egyptians journeyed almost alto- 
gether upon the rivers, or on roads which ran through the low- 
lands. But the people of Greece were forced to travel by sea, for 
Greece is a hilly country with no great rivers and very few open 
extended plains. No part of the peninsula is more than twenty- 
five or thirty miles from the sea. Consequently, in most cases, 
it wg,s easier to get from one place to another by sailing in and 
out among the bays and islands than by traveling across the 
hiUs. 

Babylonia and Egypt were great open agricultural countries. 
The majority of the people in both countries devoted themselves 
to raising cattle and grain. Greece, on the other hand, was al- 
most altogether unsmted for agriculture. Here and there in the 

30 



EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE AND THE ISLANDS 3 1 

peninsula were small areas suitable for farming, but most of the 
people in the regions which were at all thickly populated, were 
forced to make their living by engaging in trade. This was espe- 
cially true in the southern part, where, as we shall see later, most 
of the development of Greece took place. On the hillsides, oHve 
trees and grape vines grew in profusion and consequently olive 
oil and wine were the staple articles of trade. Grain and cattle 
had to be imported and even then many of the people had to 
emigrate to other regions of the Mediterranean to find new places 
to live. 

Previous to the year 1870, it was commonly supposed that the 
earliest Greek civilization was borrowed from Egypt and Baby- 
lonia, and that the Phoenicians were the agents who brought Excavations 
this civilization to Greece. In the last generation, how- ^^^ ^^^ 
ever, the story of the early Greeks has been completely islands 
retold. Many scholars have devoted themselves to studying the 
excavations in Asia Minor and Greece and the islands, and to-day 
it is known that Greek civilization is an independent development 
almost as old as that of the Egyptians and Babylonians. First 
the remains of Troy, a city in Asia Minor, were discovered. 
Later, the cities of Tiryns and Mycenae in Greece were unearthed. 
Since 1900, the ruins of a famous city in Crete, called Cnossus 
(or Knossos), have been explored. As a result, it is now known 
that the earliest civilization in the ^Egean region was developed 
in the island of Crete. From Crete it spread to the other islands 
and to the mainland and ultimately came into contact with the 
civilization of Egypt and the other lands of the east. 

The Tanglewood Tales of Hawthorne tell the story of Theseus 
who was sent with eight other youths and nine maidens as a 
sacrifice to the Cretan Minotaur. The adventure of q^^^^ ^^g 
Theseus was most dramatic. He and his companions were forerunner 
saved because Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, ° ^^^^^ 
learned to love Theseus and helped him so that he was able to 
kill the dread Minotaur. 

For many generations this story was regarded as a work of 
Greek fancy without a kernel of truth. Since the discoveries 



32 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

at Cnossus, however, historians have come to believe that there 
is at least an element of fact in the legend. In very ancient 
times, thej-e was undoubtedly a great ruler on the island who held 
dominion over the people of the ^gean region and even over 
some of the mainland of Greece. The sacrifice of Theseus and 
his companions probably represents the tribute which the people 
of the mainland were forced to pay to the king of Crete. 

Step by step the palace of this king has been excavated. For 
thousands of years it was buried under the ground. It con- 
sisted of great open courts and long corridors, of an almost end- 
less number of sleeping rooms, living rooms, and audience 
chambers, of store closets and servants' quarters. It was as large 
as the great Egyptian and Babylonian palaces. No wonder the 
Greeks thought of it as a labyrinth, accustomed as they were to 
houses much smaller in size. 

In this palace the king and his family lived surrounded by 
courtiers and servants. Life in the palace, as shown in pictures 
Cretan painted on the walls over three thousand years ago, was 

civilization highly interesting. Sometimes there were great religious 
festivals. Sometimes there were receptions of ambassadors, 
bringing rich presents to the king. Sometimes there were games 
not unlike modern bull fights, in which young men and young 
women took part. 

The dress of the men was comparatively simple. They wore 
a single linen garment belted in at the waist with a sash of brilliant 
color. The clothes of the women were extremely • modern. 
They were elaborately embroidered and of exceeding fineness, 
with flounces and ruffles and plaitings and shirrings and fine 
stitches. Men and women alike wore jewelry — rings, brace- 
lets, necklaces, and earrings of silver and gold. 

The common people lived in the simplest of houses. Their life 
was much less attractive than that of the king and his court. 
They devoted themselves to farming and to manufacture just 
as the Egyptians and Babylonians did. They were carpenters 
and masons and sculptors and painters, makers of pottery, and 
of gold, silver, and bronze ornaments and utensils. They were 



MYCEN^AN CIVILIZATION 33 

weavers and dyers of cloth. Many of them were shipbuilders 
and sailors. A thousand years before the coming of the Phoe- 
nicians, the Cretans were already sailing far out on the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. Their ships landed on the coasts of Egypt and Syria 
and Asia Minor. They had trading stations in Cyprus and the 
^gean islands. They had colonies in Greece and southern Italy 
and Sicily two thousand or more years before the birth of 
Christ. 

In prehistoric times, the mainland of Greece was covered with 
forests; wild beasts and men of the Stone Age roamed over it. 
These men were probably of the same race as the people Mycenaean 
of the islands. As the Cretans developed their civiliza- civilization 
tion, they extended it gradually to the mainland. Consequently, 
we find, especially in the southern part of the peninsula, in the 
ruins of two very ancient cities — Tiryns and Mycenae — evi- 
dences of a civilization similar to that of Crete. The palaces at 
Tiryns and Mycenae were smaller than that of Cnossus. The 
life of the kings and their courtiers was less magnificent. There 
was less trade and less manufacture. Still the names of Tiryns 
and Mycenae are worth remembering because these two cities 
were discovered and excavated fifteen or twenty years earlier 
than Cnossus and their discovery led the way to the excavations 
in Crete. 

These earliest inhabitants of Greece and the islands were a 
small, dark-skinned people averaging scarcely five feet, four 
inches in height. Sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C., Barbarian 
another race of men, larger, taller, and fairer, made their 'invaders 
way into the peninsula from the north. 

These invaders were rude barbarians. Men and women alike 
were dressed in the skins of wild animals or in the hides of cattle 
or sheep. They were huntsmen and shepherds and warriors. 
They lived in rude mud huts or in tents made of skins. They 
knew almost nothing of agriculture, and certainly nothing of 
trade. Step by step, they forced their way down into the pen- 
insula, conquering the earlier inhabitants and making themselves 
masters of the land. 



34 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

These were the times celebrated in the Greek legends. No one 
any longer thinks of the legends as history, but they are im- 

The Trojan portant because they give us a picture of the life which 

^^^ this race of conquerors led. 

The most famous of the legends is the story of the Trojan War. 
We are told in this story that sometime in the age when Mycenae 
was the greatest city on the mainland, Paris, a son of the Trojan 
king, Priam, came to Greece to visit Menelaus, king of Sparta. 
At the end of his visit, Paris was guilty of an act of extreme 
treachery. He carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, the most 
beautiful woman in Greece. All Greece sprang to arms in re- 
venge. For ten years the siege of Troy went on, until the city 
fell into the hands of the Greeks and was destroyed. The chief 
hero of the siege of Troy, or Ilios as the Greeks called it, is Achilles, 
whose deeds are celebrated in the Iliad of Homer. Besides the 
Iliad, Homer wrote another poem called the Odyssey in which he 
described the wanderings of Ulysses (Odysseus), another of the 
Greek heroes, after the war. 

The Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the greatest poems in all 
the world's literature. They give us a wonderful picture of 
the times in which they were written — sometime between looo 
and 700 B.C. 

Chief among the people of the Homeric age were the tribal 
chiefs, or kings, as they were called. In times of peace, they 

People of ^^^ ^^ their halls, entertaining the principal men of the tribe 

Homer's and judging the people. When time hung heavy, they went 

out to hunt, or engaged in athletic sports: boxing, wrestling, 

or running foot races. In war, they maintained themselves by 

plunder; in peace, they lived on the produce of their fields and 

their flocks. 

About the king the chief men, the elders of the tribe, were 
gathered. When they met in council, they indulged freely in 
criticism and debate. If the elders felt that the king was wrong, 
they seldom spared his feeUngs; and yet, if the king was strong, he 
heeded the advice of his council or disregarded it, as he pleased. 
From time to time, the mass of warriors in the tribe was called 



PEOPLE OF HOMER'S TIME 35 

together to listen to the plans of the king and his council. Often 
there was much ' noise and confusion, and sometimes heated 
argument among the leaders. In the end, if the warriors ap- 
proved, they shouted their approbation; if they disapproved, 
they howled and clashed their arms in hate and derision. 

Most of the tribesmen were shepherds and small farmers. On 
the lands of the king there were, in the words of Homer," tall trees 
blossoming, pear trees and pomegranates and apple trees with 
bright fruit, and sweet figs and olives in bloom"; but the poor 
man had little more than a few pigs, a cow or a goat, and a few 
half tilled acres of wheat or barley or oats. 

Perhaps one man in a hundred devoted himself to manufacture 
or trade. There were armorers and shipwrights and smiths 
and builders, and occasional workers in silver and gold. The 
magnificence of the age of Cretan civiUzation no longer existed 
in the land. 

The closest bonds among men were the ties of kinship. Next 
to the gods, a man's father stood highest in his respect. Be- 
tween brother and brother, there existed the strongest of obliga- 
tions. In case of injury, especially in case of death, all male 
relations were expected to take up the quarrel and carry it on 
until the injury had been properly avenged. 

Next to his own family, the tribesman was bound to care for 
the stranger. "For he thought it great blame in his heart that 
a stranger should stand long at hie gates." For days at a time, 
the visitor might accept hospitality, and when he departed, if 
he was pleasing to the lord of the house, he was sent on his way 
with gifts. 

The women were as highly esteemed as the men. They 
mingled freely with their husbands and brothers; they were 
allowed the greatest freedom; their counsel and advice was fre- 
quently sought. Yet their primary duties were purely domestic. 
Even the highest busied themselves with the simplest household 
affairs, "grinding yellow grain on the millstone," or "weaving 
webs and turning yarn as they sit. " The daughter of the king 
went out with her hand maidens, "taking the goodly raiment to 



36 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

the river to wash," while her mother rested "by the hearth, 
with her hand maidens, spinning yarn of sea-purple stain." 

The gods who, it was believed, dwelt on snow-capped Mount 
Olympus in northern Greece presided over the destinies of these 
Gods of an- early Greeks. Zeus, "the cloud gatherer," "father of 
cient Greece gofjg and men, " presided when the gods gathered in council. 
When he was angry he hurled his thunderbolts from heaven; 
when he was pleased he sent his earthly children gentle showers 
of rain. His wife was the goddess Hera whose queenliness and 
splendor outshone that of all her companions. She was the 
protectress of married women. She was jealous, and easily 
stirred to anger when gods or men failed to respect her. 

Apollo and Artemis were twin brother and sister. The former 
was god of the sunlight; he bestowed the blessings of springtime 
and summer; men prayed to him in the days of their sick- 
ness; he was patron of music, poetry, and art. Everything con- 
/ sidered, he was the most lovable of all the gods. Artemis, his 

sister, was the fair maiden goddess whose emblem the Greeks 
found in the moon. She loved the cool depths of the forest, 
where, surrounded by nymphs and other wood-maidens, she en- 
joyed herself in hunting wild animals and in bathing in the clear 
pools and streams. 

Athena was goddess of wisdom and favorite child of Zeus. 

She sprang, full grown and full armed, from the head of her 

father. To those whom she favored she was exceedingly gentle; 

but those who opposed her, she pursued without mercy, often 

• driving them to their death. 

Ares, the war god, was son of Zeus and Hera. He was patron 
of men going into battle. He gloried in strife and destruction. 
His emblems were the spear and the torch. His brother Hephaes- 
tus was god of fire. He was ugly and lame and unattractive. 
He was worshiped especially by workers in metal; he was 
known as the blacksmith of the gods. 

Hephaestus was married to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and 
beauty. Aphrodite was worshiped especially by youths and 
maidens who sought each other in marriage. She was also god- 



THE ACH.EANS AND DORIANS 37 

dess of gardens and flowers and of all things which are just spring- 
ing into life. 

Besides these eight, there were four others who sat in the 
council of the gods. Poseidon was god of the seas and Hermes 
was god of commerce. Hestia was goddess of the household 
and Demeter was patroness of cultivated things growing in the 
fields. 

Frequently one god or another descended from Olympus and 
temporarily took on the shape of a man. To the Greeks, the gods 
were very much less dreadful than they had been to the Baby- 
lonians and Egyj^tians. Men and gods were much more inti- 
mate, and worship was much simpler. 

An interesting feature of the Greek religion was the belief in 
oracles as a means of discovering the will of the gods. The 
chief of these oracles was sacred to Apollo. Once upon a time, 
so the Greeks said, Apollo had wandered on earth. At Delphi, 
in the mountains of central Greece, he had slain a dread monster 
and in commemoration of this his worshipers erected a shrine 
there. Here, over a cleft in the rocks, a priestess sat and received 
the words of the god. Men from all parts of Greece and the 
islands came to this oracle at Delphi to consult their patron. 
Thousands of men and women for centuries believed without 
question that in this way Apollo made known his will to the 
dwellers on earth. 

In the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer constantly refers to the 
Greeks as the Achaeans. These Achaeans were probably the 
earliest of the conquering tribes that invaded Greece from The Achaeans 
the north. They were followed in later centuries by a andDonans 
second race of conquerors called the Dorians who seem to have 
driven the Achaeans before them out into the islands of the ^gean 
and even into Asia Minor beyond. 

This period of Greek history is, however, very vague. Even 
the dates are by no means certain. All that we know is that 
when written records begin, the Greeks were living on the main- 
land and in the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor across the 
^gean Sea. 



THE CITY STATE 39 

In both Egypt and Babylonia, you remember, the country 
was originally divided into numerous small provinces each of 
which acknowledged some tribal leader or king as its chief. The city 
Later these provinces were united into one nation under a ^*^*® 
single king. In Greece, owing to the character of the country, 
the people were never united. From the beginning to the end of 
Greek history, the country was divided into a number of districts 
not much larger than the average county in the United States. 
In each of these divisions, there were two or three cities, and each 
city had its own independent government. In some cities a 
majority of the people were active citizens ; in others a tribal king 
and his nobles controlled the city's affairs. From time to time, 
one or another city conquered its neighbors, but the conquest 
was never permanent, and the story of Greece is therefore the 
story of the development of these city states. 

The Greek city must not be confused with the modern idea of 
a city. Frequently the city itself consisted only of a small center 
. of population — the homes of the artisans and merchants, the 
market place, the citadel, and the temples of the gods. Besides 
that it included several miles of outlying country where most of 
the people lived. Therefore, the actual city was often almost 
abandoned except when men came to the market place to trans- 
act their business or to participate in elections, or to the temples 
to take part in festivals in honor of the gods. 

The government of Greek cities varied according to the char- 
acter of the people. In Homeric times, Greece was governed by 
a number of tribal chiefs or kings — Agamemnon, Menelaus, 
Odysseus, and others ■ — assisted by a council of nobles. The 
common people were allowed to take only a minor part. This 
form of government persisted in some cities, notably in Sparta, 
throughout Greek history. In most of the cities, however, the 
government became democratic. All the citizens, at least all 
the citizens of importance, met in assemblies and elected their 
officers and took an active part in making the laws. 

The reason for this difference can be easily understood if it is 
remembered that cities like Sparta never developed into com- 



40 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

mercial centers. The people were landholders and farmers who 
either cultivated their own fields or rented them out to others. 
Athens and ^^ Sparta, for instance, the people were a race of soldiers 
Sparta con- who devoted their lives to fighting rather than to busi- 
ness. Consequently the citizens were accustomed to obey 
their superiors and to )deld their rights to those who were set 
over them as lords. 

If all the Greeks had been like the Spartans, we should not be 
studying Greek history. Sparta contributed practically nothing 
to the world's civilization. Except for the fact that the Spartans 
were the chief enemies of the Athenians in the later wars among 
the Greeks, even the name of their city might have been for- 
gotten long ago and lost from the history of the world. 

The story of Athens and of a number of other Greek cities is 
different. They were great commercial centers. Their citizens 
were manufacturers and merchants and traveled over all the 
ancient world. Each man was equal to his neighbors and democ- 
racy in government naturally followed. The people developed ^ 
the art and the literature which have made Greece famous ever 
since. 

Even in Homeric times, as we have already learned, the Greeks 
were settling in the islands of the ^gean and on the coast of Asia 
Greek Minor beyond. This early colonization was very much 

colonization ^j].g g^ continuation of the migration which brought the 
Achseans and Dorians into the peninsula. The cities that were 
founded on the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor were as 
advanced in civilization as the cities on the mainland when regu- 
lar written records of Greek history begin. 

Later on, after Greece was thoroughly settled and all the main 
cities were founded, another period of colonization started. 
The main reason for this second period of colonization is un- 
doubtedly that the people of the older cities were eager to 
establish new centers of trade. Here and there, in all parts of 
the Mediterranean, the Greeks found excellent opportunities to 
exchange their finished products — pottery and weapons, cloth- 
ing, furniture, and household utensils — for the raw products 



COMPARED WITH MODERN COLONIZATION 4 1 

of the barbarians who lived on the borders of the sea. There 
were gold, silver, copper and iron, timber, grain, and cattle to 
be gathered, and trading ships went wherever these could be 
found. Besides, there were rich lands in many parts of -the Medi- 
terranean which tempted those Greeks who preferred to live their 
lives as farmers, and to those lands many hundreds and thousands 
of people gradually made their way. Then, there were numbers of 
men in Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and other cities who were dis- 
contented with the way they were governed, and they, too, were 
eager to leave the home city to seek their fortunes in new lands. 

The conditions were similar to the conditions in England, Hol- 
land, and France which led so many people to cross the Atlantic 
three hundred years ago. The Greek colonies were not so compared 
very different from those which were founded at Jamestown, with modem 
Boston, New Amsterdam, and Quebec. The Greek colo- ^° °°^^^ *°^ 
nies, too, were founded by merchants and farmers and men dis- 
contented with the home government. They grew and flourished 
just as the colonies in America did. 

In one respect the Greek colonies were different, however, from 
those of England, Holland, and France. Once the Greeks left 
the mother city, they became independent; they owed no al- 
legiance and no duties to the city of their birth. They were still 
bound to it by ties of sentiment and sympathy; they frequently 
called themselves exiles, but they governed themselves as they 
pleased. 

If you look at a map of the Mediterranean basin as it was 
peopled about 550 B.C., you will see how widely the Greeks were 
scattered. There were at least fifty or sixty Greek cities on the 
shores of the Black Sea. Byzantium (modern Constantinople), 
on the Bosporus, was a Greek city. The whole coast of Asia 
Minor, the northern shore of the ^Egean, the island of Sicily, 
and the coast of Gaul (modern France) were dotted with Greek 
colonies. There were Greek colonies on the northern coast of 
Africa. Indeed, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the 
Strait of Gibraltar, Greek cities were scattered with compara- 
tively only a few miles between. 



42 GREEK CTVILIZATION 

Between 550 and 500 B.C., as has already been stated, the people 
of the eastern Mediterranean countries were conquered by the 
Greek Persians. The Greek cities in Asia Minor were included 

history jj^ |-.]^a^t conquest. In 490 B.C., the Persians began an in- 

vasion of Europe with the purpose of conquering Greece. A 
great fleet of warships and transports gathered in the conquered 
cities of Asia Minor and made its way across the ^Egean Sea. 
The Persian soldiers landed at Marathon scarcely thirty miles 
from the city of Athens. What chance of success had the Athe- 
nians against this conquering host? Still, undaunted, they ad- 
vanced bravely into battle. The Persian army was defeated, 
and Greece, for the time being, was saved from invasion. The 
secret of the victory at Marathon is simple: the Athenians won 
because they were better trained than the Persians. 

Ten years later, the Persians returned to the attack. Troops 
were gathered in almost every part of their great empire in Asia 
and Africa. This huge army, which a noted historian calls "a 
regular swarm of locusts which descended on Greece to devour 
her," crossed the Hellespont, entering the peninsula from the 
north. A great fleet followed along the coast. 

At a narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae, a band of de- 
voted Spartans held off the whole Persian army for three days 
until attacked in the rear by a detachment sent around a secret 
way on information given by a traitor. The Spartans perished to 
the last man, but the battle of Thermopylae has ever since been 
one of the most noted events in history. This handful of Greek 
patriots taught the world for all time how men might die. 

After the battle of Thermopylae, central Greece was overrun 
by the Persians and Greek liberty seemed to be lost. Fortunately 
the fleet of the Greeks was still unconquered. The ships gathered 
in a small bay protected by the island of Salamis and waited for 
the Persians to attack. One morning, the Persian fleet attempted 
to enter the harbor and the great naval battle began. Ship after 
ship was destroyed by the Greeks as it came in. The flower of 
the Persian fleet was destroyed. The hopes of the Persians were 
blasted. They had staked their fortunes on one battle and they 



GREEK fflSTORY 43 

had lost. Some of the Persian army which remained in Greece 
made one more attempt the next year to retrieve their losses but 
they were completely defeated and almost annihilated at Platsea. 

After the Persian wars were over, Athens became the chief 
city of Greece. For fifty years or more, it was the leader of a 
great confederacy, called the Confederacy of Delos, which in- 
cluded many of the cities on the mainland and most of the islands 
in the ^Egean Sea. For thirty years, the fortunes of the city 
were guided by Pericles, perhaps the most noted man in Greek 
history. Athenian sea captains and soldiers and merchants were 
to be found in most of the islands and in many neighboring cities. 
About 450 B.C., Athens reached the height of its glory. Its 
market place was crowded with merchants. Its great temples 
and public buildings were marvels of beauty. Its artists and 
poets and philosophers were producing works which the world 
has never forgotten. 

But Athens had one great rival,' the city of Sparta. In 431 B.C., 
the two cities began to make war on each other. This war lasted 
nearly thirty years (431 B.C.-404 B.C.) until Athens was com- 
pletely humbled. The city lost all its island possessions, but 
remained the chief center of Greek civilization, the home of every- 
thing that was best in the life of the ancient Greeks. 

In 338 B.C., the Greeks were conquered by the Macedonians, 
who invaded the peninsula from the north. The king of the 
Macedonians was Philip. His son was Alexander the Great. 
Under Alexander, the Greeks joined with the Macedonians, in- 
vaded the Persian empire, and carried Greek civilization into all 
the lands of the east (336-323 B.C.). 

Alexander's great empire broke to pieces almost immediately, 
after his death. Thenceforth, the lands of the eastern Mediterra- 
nean were ruled by descendants of Alexander's generals until they 
were conquered by the Romans in the second century before the 
birth of Christ. 

Life in ancient Athens is t3^ical of the best that Greek civili- 
zation produced. Try to put yourself in the place of a traveler 
entering the Piraeus, or port of Athens, about the year 350 B.C. 



44 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

You have probably arrived in a merchant vessel fitted with 

square sails, and with some fifteen or twenty oars to each side. 

Pirseus the ^^^ journey has been long and tedious because during 

port of part of the trip the sailors have been compelled to drive 

Athens ^-^^ ^j^-p g^g^jj^g^ |-]^g ^ijj,^^ ^[ii^ ^l^gjj- Q^j-g, The nights have 

usually been spent at anchor because the captain was afraid to 
venture across the open water in the dark. Suppose that you 
have come from the northern coast of the Black Sea. The cargo 
of the ship consists of hides and wool and copper and grain. 
Perhaps you stopped long enough at Byzantium to gather some 
bales of carpets and rugs. You may even have loaded some 
spices and drugs there from Arabia and the lands still farther to 
the east. 

In the harbor about you are all sorts of queer vessels: short 
and dumpy fishing boats with square brown or yellow sails and 
eight or ten great clumsy oars to a side, merchant vessels which 
have arrived from Africa, Asia Minor, or Italy, pleasure boats, 
with red or purple or parti-colored sails, belonging to wealthy 
Athenians, and great, long, narrow war vessels, called triremes, 
fitted with three banks of oars. 

At the docks there is great noise and apparent confusion. 
Half- naked men are loading and unloading the ships. Farther 
along are the shipyards where the ships are built and repaired. 
Back from the shore are the warehouses and markets where you 
can find everything from emeralds and pearls and spices to lum- 
' ber and tallow and hides. 

The Piraeus was the busiest part of Athens. It had a few in- 
teresting buildings, but except for these and the busy fife of the 
merchants and sailors it could have offered little for the visitor 
to see. The sailors and merchants belonged to all races and lands. 
There were Greeks and Italians and Egyptians and Phoenicians 
and Ethiopians. The houses were poor and uncomfortable, 
the streets muddy and offensively dirty. There were wine 
shops and cook shops in which the sailors gathered, but ex- 
cept for the warehouses and wholesale markets, there were very 
few respectable places where merchants could stop. 



THE ROAD TO ATHENS 45 

Back to Athens from the Piraeus ran a broad road, five miles 
long, enclosed between two high walls. "The straight highroad is 
swarming with traffic; clumsy wagons are bringing down The road to 
marble from the mountains; other wains are headed toward Athens 
Athens with lumber and bales of foreign wares. Countless 
donkeys laden with panniers are being flogged along. A great 
deal of carrying is done by half-naked sweating porters. " To the 
traveler going east along this road the city of Athens gradually 
came into view, surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains 
gleaming in the sunlight, for Athens is famous for its climate. 
All summer long the air is clear and comparatively cool. There 
are soft, gentle breezes blowing from the JEge&n. Only in winter 
there may be a fair supply of rain, a little frost, and still less snow. 

The city itself was enclosed by a wall. The streets ran in all 
directions, most of them scarcely wider than alleys or paths. In 
the center of the city rose a great rock, the Acropolis, about 
1000 feet long, 500 feet wide, and 350 feet high. This was the 
chief fortress of the city and the site of most of the great pubUc 
buildings. 

Let us suppose we are ancient Athenians. First, we will make 
our way to the market place where most of the buying and selling 
in Athens is done. It is the middle of the morning and Market 
crowds of citizens are gathered there. There are hardly place 
any women among them, only a few slave girls and a few ^" ^ °^^ 
market women, for the ladies of Athens very rarely venture out 
of the house. 

■ On the outskirts of the open square are beautiful marble build- 
ings — temples and assembly-rooms and covered promenades 01 
porticoes — where the men gather to transact their private 
business and the business of the city, or to exchange the news of 
the day. In the center of the market place are numerous booths 
and stalls made of boards, or covered with awnings where all 
sorts of articles are offered for sale. Fish, olive oil, wine, bread, 
fruit, and vegetables are the chief articles of traffic; but one may 
buy clothing, furniture, household utensils, pottery, weapons, 
or jewelry as well. 



46 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

Not all of the crowd is buying and selling. The market place 
is the general meeting place of the Athenians and the men of the 
town go there to meet their friends and to discuss politics and 
religion and philosophy, to arrange for dinner parties and great 
public festivals, or just simply to idle away their time. 

In the streets off the market place and out on the road to the 
Piragus, the poorer Athenians and the slaves of rich masters are 
working in factories, making cloth, leather, pottery, furniture, 
or armor, or preparing stones for buildings, or gathering together 
the wine and olive oil which later will be sold in the city or sent 
to the Piraeus to be carried to Asia Minor, Italy, or Egypt for 
sale. These factories are comparatively small rooms or open 
spaces where ten or a dozen workmen are gathered together. 
They work under the eyes of their master or under the direction 
of an overseer. Practically everything is made by hand. 

At noon the business day of the well-to-do Athenian was over. 

. In the factories and out on the farms, the poorer classes and the 

tr • slaves continued their labor, but the richer Athenians re- 
Homes m ' 

ancient turned to their homes. The houses were comparatively 

Athens simple. The poor man's house consisted of only one, two, 

or three rooms. Even the finest houses had none of the conven- 
iences to which we are accustomed. Sometimes the house had 
one or two narrow windows opening on the street, sometimes it 
was two stories high, but usually it presented a plain wall to the 
passer-by. 

Inside the door a narrow passage led into an open court, sur- 
rounded on the sides by a row of pillars upon which an awning 
was stretched to offer shade from the sun. In the center of the 
court was the family altar or a fountain. Leading out from the 
court were sleeping rooms and work rooms of the master and 
other men of the family. Beyond the main court was a dining 
room, and back of that another court reserved exclusively for 
the women of the house. Greek ' men and women sometimes sat 
down to meals together, but when strangers were present the 
women always remained in their own quarters. 

If the master was very wealthy, the house might be built of 



THE WAY PEOPLE DRESSED ' 47 

marble, otherwise it was made of stucco or common stone. In 
the courts and the dining room a few wall paintings and statues 
might be found. The furniture was extremely simple, consist- 
ing of a few chairs, benches, couches, and one or two tables on 
which bronze or pottery lamps were placed. In each of the 
sleeping rooms was a bed and a few hooks for clothing. If the 
wardrobe of the master or mistress was elaborate, the surplus 
clothes were stored in a wooden chest. In summer the houses 
were cool and comfortable, but in winter they must have been 
very cold. The Athenians had no stoves or furnaces. Their 
only method of heating was an open bowl or brazier of burning 
charcoal which they carried from room to room. 

Neither the men nor the women of Athens were troubled by 
changing fashions. The dress of both sexes was very much alike. 
Both wore an under garment or tunic which reached from .j-j^g ^ 
the shoulders to the knees. This garment was regularly people 
belted in at the waist. The texture and cut of the tunic 
varied. ' The rich man and woman wore fine cotton, linen, or 
wool, dyed in various colors and draped in ample folds. The 
poor man's tunic was made of coarse, brown material, was much 
shorter and scantier and had no ornamentation at all. 

Over the tunic, both men and women wore a generous oblong 
woolen shawl, draped around the body according to the taste of 
the owner. This shawl was frequently fastened at the shoulder 
by gold or silver or jeweled pins. It was never worn when 
working, but was reserved for street wear and for formal occa- 
sions, and so was usually taken off in the house. 

Children were dressed like their elders, except that they very 
rarely wore anything but the tunic. In hot weather the younger 
children were frequently allowed to play about with very little 
clothing at all. 

This simple costume of ancient Athenians was not monotonous. 
In those days men and women alike were fond of brilliant colors 
in dress; they did not wear the blacks, dark blues, grays, and 
browns which are so common on our streets. White was the 
dominant tone of an Athenian crowd, relieved by bright dashes 

W. Anc. Civ. —4 



4^ GREEK CIVILIZATION 

of red, blue, yellow, and purple. At carnival times and on 
days of public celebrations, even the older men were dressed 
in tunics gaily embroidered in bright colors, with outer shawls 
of brilliant violet, purple, or red. 

And on the day of a wedding! Behold the bride in her 
flowing robes which rival the colors of the rainbow. Her veil 
is of shimmering cloth of silver, her hair is scented with per- 
fumes from Arabia. She is decorated with rings and bracelets 
and earrings, set with emeralds, rubies, and pearls. She is 
radiantly happy and beautiful. The groom is dressed in gar- 
ments scarcely less briUiant. His tunic is embroidered in 
purple. His outer garments are of flame-colored linen or 
wool. His dark locks are encircled by a wreath of leaves and 
of flowers. His sandals are bound with straps of red leather 
and with buckles of gold. He is handsome and manly and 
engaging. He is typical of his city and the life of his times. 

The meals of the Athenian were ordinarily very simple. The 
poor man's diet consisted almost altogether of bread, or barley 
Athenian porridge, and olive oil and wine. Sometimes he added a 
meals little honey and fruit. The rich man's table was more 

elaborate; but even he had nothing like the variety to which we ^ 
are accustomed in modern times. The staple articles of food for 
all classes were bread, wine, olive oil, and perhaps honey. In the 
evening the wealthier citizens might have in addition, fish, fowl, 
vegetables, fruit, and sweetmeats. Wine served the ancient 
Athenian in place of tea and coffee._ Olive oil and honey were 
substitutes for our butter and sugar, and meat was rarely used. 
If you walked the streets of ancient Athens you would con- 
stantly be running into half-naked youngsters. Even the children 
Education °^ well-to-do families were allowed to play in the dust and 
of boys and the dirt and the puddles, until they were seven or eight 
^^"^ ^ years old. Leapfrog, hide and seek, and ball games were 

in progress in every street and alley. There were no kindergar- 
tens or play-grounds to take care of the younger girls and boys. 
At seven, the boys began their regular schooling, but the girls 
were educated at home. Ordinarily girls learned a little about 



EDUCATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS 49 

reading and writing, but much more about cooking, sewing, 
embroidering, spinning, and weaving, for their business in Ufe 
was altogether connected with making a home. Athenian 
women were almost never seen in public. As a rule, they married 
very early, when they were fifteen or sixteen years old. After 
that they were engaged in raising a family and taking care of 
their husband's interests at home. 

For the boys, there were regular schools in all parts of Athens. 
Each boy, at least of the wealthier classes, had a pedagogue, 
a slave who accompanied his charge everywhere out-of-doors. 
He carried his master's books and writing tablets, helped him 
with his lessons, and kept the boy out of mischief when the 
regular schoolmaster was not at hand. School began early in 
the morning and lasted till sundown. The boys sat on rude 
low benches, scratching their lessons on wax tablets and reciting 
their tasks in concert. The master sat in a high chair surveying 
the scene. There was plenty of noise and confusion, and flog- 
gings were frequent. The Athenians did not " Spare the rod 
and spoil the child." 

The course of study consisted of reading, writing, and music 
and possibly a little arithmetic. Later on the boys learned to 
recite extracts from Homer and the other poets by heart. " Learn- 
ing to sing, " we are told, " is probably the most important item, 
for every boy and man ought to be able to bear his part in the 
great chorals which are a notable element in most religious 
festivals: besides, a knowledge of singing is a great aid in appre- 
ciating lyric poetry, or the choruses in tragedy, and in learning 
to declaim." 

In the afternoon, the boys went to the teacher of gymnastics. 
Here they learned running, jumping, wrestling, and discus throw- 
ing and elementary military maneuvers. Their bodies were 
developed until they were ready to enter the ranks of militia when 
they were eighteen years old. 

Athenian education was thus designed to accomplish three 
purposes. First of all, every male citizen must be sufficiently 
intelligent to read and write and understand the laws and the 



50 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

literature of his city. Second, he must know enough music to 
participate in the great pubUc festivals — the religious proces- 
sions and the great dramas which are given in the open-air 
theater. And third, he must develop his body until he is able to 
serve in the army and defend his city from attack. 

While the boys were with their physical training teachers, 
heir fathers and elder brothers were in the gyinnasium. The 
The gymna- market place was the general meeting place of the Athe- 
sium nians in the morning, but in the late afternoon, all the men 

of the city, especially those of the wealthier classes, repaired to 
the gymnasium. This was not a building, but an open park 
for recreation very much like the parks in our modern cities. 
There were three such parks in Athens with great open grass 
spaces and leafy bowers adorned with statues of nymphs and 
fauns and satyrs. In the parks were bubbling fountains and pools 
for swimming and walks and deep shaded woodlands. Scattered 
here and there were fields for running, jumping, wrestling, and 
discus and javelin throwing. Groups of elderly men might be 
seen walking or sitting in the shade of the woods talking politics, 
philosophy, poetry, and religion. But the majority of the visi- 
tors were interested in athletics. The Greeks were worshipers 
of manly vigor and manly beauty. To be wise and learned was 
greatly to be admired, but the hero of Athens was the young 
man with graceful limbs and perfect body who excelled in running, 
jumping, wrestling, and javelin casting. His name was in the 
mouth of every man in the city. His praises were told in song 
and in story. Next to him even the poet and the philosopher 
were forced to accept second rank. 

So far we have found but little in tlie life of ancient Athens 
which distinguishes it especially from that of the other centers 
Government *^^ civilization which existed three or four thousand years 
by the ago. But there was one thing that marks the city among 

peop e ^j^ ^j^g others which we have studied. Athens was governed 

by the people; all the others were governed by kings. Every 
citizen of Athens, rich or poor, was a member of the as- 
sembly. Every citizen was eligible to hold the highest ofi&ce of 



GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE 5 1 

state. There were old, noble families in Athens, there were 
plenty of r-ich and distinguished citizens; but neither family 
tradition nor wealth gave any man anything but social promi- 
nence. A poor man might occupy a place of great importance; 
no political privileges went with social position or wealth. 

And yet it must not be imagined that every resident of Athens 
was a voter. No slave could ever become a citizen, for instance; 
and there were thousands of foreigners in the city, merchants 
and traders who had settled there to carry on business, who were 
not allowed to share in settling the affairs of state. There were 
no naturalization laws such as we have at present. No one who 
was not born in Athens and of Athenian parents had any share in 
the government; therefore the privilege of citizenship was very 
much restricted. 

The assembly generally met once every week or ten days. 
The meeting place was an open field near the Acropolis. There 
were no seats or benches for the members. Every man stood or 
squatted on the ground. At one end of the meeting place there 
was a raised platform for the presiding officer and his assistants, 
and a sort of pulpit for the speakers. Laws and decrees were pre- 
pared by a Council of Five Hundred, the members of which were 
chosen by lot. The meeting was far from orderly. The people 
shouted and hooted and applauded the speakers according to their 
feelings. But when the time for voting arrived, the assembly 
settled , down and recorded its will. The vote of the majority 
was binding. The minority was trained to accept its defeat. 

Nearly all the officers of the city were chosen by lot. There 
were hundreds of officers and nearly every citizen sooner or later 
held some office. Practically every Athenian was trained to 
participate in the government. Thus Athens was the first 
democracy in the history of civilization and has served ever since 
as a model of what a government by the people can be. 

In ancient Athens, indeed in every city in Greece, practically 
every one accepted the same religion. The gods who dwelt 
on Olympus were still thought of vaguely as the rulers of the 
destinies of men. That does not mean that all people had 



52 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

exactly the same religious ideas. Ignorant men and women 
were extremely superstitious. They believed in all sorts of signs 
Religious ^^^ omens. For them, the howling of the wind was a 
festivals sign of evil. For them there were soothsayers and witches 
games ^j^^ foretold the future by studying the entrails of animals 
offered as sacrifices. They trembled at the thunder and lightning 
because they were afraid of the anger of the gods. At the other 
extreme were the few atheists who denied the gods entirely and 
lived their lives without thought of the influence of the divine 
powers. But the vast majority of enUghtened people accepted the 
teachings of their fathers. They thought of the gods as remote 
influences which governed the lives of men; but they troubled 
themselves very little about relations with the powers on high. 
They offered sacrifices to Zeus and to Athena, for instance, not 
because they were frightened or because they thought that these 
gods interfered in the affairs of men in the way that is described in 
the Iliad and the Odyssey, but because good manners prescribed 
that this was the proper thing to do. Religion for most of the 
people was a matter of family pride and pride in their city. 
Men and women took part in private and public worship because 
that was the custom. Honesty, truth, righteousness, and love of 
one's neighbor had nothing to do with religion. Public and 
private worship were celebrations very much like our modern 
birthday parties and like our celebrations of Memorial Day and 
Fourth of July. 

At every family meal, and on numerous other family occasions, 
the father offered sacrifices and prayers to the gods of the house- 
hold. Ten or fifteen times a year the entire population of the 
city took part in a festival in honor of one or another of the gods. 
At such times there were feasts, sports, processions, and pageants 
fixed by custom similar to our celebrations of Christmas and 
New Year and Thanksgiving, in which men and women and boys 
and girls mingled, largely for the purpose of having a good time. 
Two festivals in Athens are especially worth remembering. 
Once every four years, in midsummer, all the people engaged in a 
round of rejoicing in honor of the goddess Athena. For seven days 




Greek Festival— a Procession in the Parthenon 
53 



54 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

there was a succession of contests in music and poetic recitations 
and athletics, at which prizes were given. On the eighth day, 
thousands of people joined in an elaborate procession. A new 
robe was carried to the shrine of the goddess on the Acropolis, 
where prayers were offered and sacrifices made. This festival 
is known as the Panathenjea. Once a year, in March, the Athe- 
nians took part in another festival in honor of the god Dionysus, 
the patron god of their vines. This was really a festival of the 
spring planting. For three days there was feasting and drinking 
and all sorts of mummery very much like that which takes place 
in modern times during a carnival. Then, on the fourth day, 
very early in the morning, thousands of people hurried to the 
theater to watch the production of the dramas which were written 
in celebration of the day. 

The theater of Dionysus in Athens was a great open-air theater 
which seated 25,000 or 30,000 people, half the adult population 
The theater of the city. In the early days, the performance consisted 
in Athens Qf dancing and choral singing in honor of the god Dionysus, 
and there was no regular stage. Later on individual parts were 
added to the performance until, bit by bit, regular tragedies and 
comedies were evolved. At one end was a stage for the actors; 
below the stage was a space for the chorus ; beyond that the seats 
for the audience were arranged tier above tier. The actors wore 
masks which contained concealed megaphones so that all the 
people could hear them. There was no acting and no scenery 
such as we have in our modern theaters. The chief characters 
recited their parts without any attempt at bodily action. The 
chorus filled out the story with dancing and chanting. For the 
tragedies the subjects were chosen from the stories of the heroes 
of Greek legends. They represented great conflicts in which 
men and women suffered punishment because they were guilty 
of actions contrary to the will of the gods. Nearly all the trag- 
edies written for production in the theater of Dionysus have 
been lost and forgotten; but a few, written by three of the 
greatest poets of Athens, are stUl preserved. The Prometheus 
Bound of ^schylus, the Antigone of Sophocles, and the Iphigenia 



THE THEATER IN ATHENS 55 

of Euripides have been translated into every language of western 
Europe, and these three authors are regularly counted among the 
greatest poets that the world has ever produced. Except per- 
haps the stories and poems of the Bible, the poems of Homer, and 
the plays of Shakespeare, nothing else in literature has had such 
a great influence upon the lives of people in modern times. These 
dramas have been read and studied by scholars in every civilized 
country of the world. 

All morning long the people in the theater of Dionysus listened 
to tragedies. They wept and groaned when the hero suffered; 
they shouted for joy when he triumphed. At noon there was a 
lull in the performance; but in the afternoon the actors came out 
on the stage again for the performance of comedies. In the 
beginning, comedy in Athens was little more than a vaudeville 
show — clowns and professional athletes and mummers did their 
best to entertain the crowd. But by 450 B.C., comedy had risen 
to a plane almost as high as that of tragedy. The plays were 
carefully constructed. Regular dialogue and a chorus were 
developed, and the actors were diligently trained for their parts. 

From 425 B.C. to 385 B.C., the afternoon performances in the 
theater of Dionysus were devoted almost exclusively to the works 
of the comic poet Aristophanes. His plays dealt with all the 
topics of the time. His characters discussed religion, pohtics, 
philosophy, and education. He made fun of the most important 
men of the city. He attacked the leaders of the Assembly who 
were constantly trying to induce the people of Athens to go to 
war. He opposed the teachings of the philosophers and men 
who were advocating a new system of education. His plots were 
very modern in spite of the fact that he wrote his plays over two 
thousand years ago. 

The Greeks were also extremely fond of other kinds of poetry. 
They prized the Iliad and the Odyssey greatly. They paid almost 
equal honor to the lyric poets, men and women who wrote verses 
in praise of love and beauty, and patriotism, and devotion to the 
gods. The greatest of these poets was a woman named Sappho 
who lived in the island of Lesbos about the year 600 b.c. Her 



56 GREEK CIVILIZATION " 

poems glorified the love of men and women and their feeling for 
the beauties of nature. Next to her the Greeks honored the 
name of Pindar, who lived one hundred years later. He told of 
the glories won in athletic contests and of the good deeds of the 
rulers. His poems were sung at almost every music festival in 
Athens, and poets have copied his style ever since. 

Athens was also the home of the chief Greek historians. Herod- 
otus, who is called "the father of history," lived in the city about 
History and 45© B.C. He was born in Asia Minor and spent a number 
philosophy Qf years traveling in Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, and the 
Greek colonies. After the Persian wars were over, he wrote a 
narrative describing the lives and customs of the nations who took 
part in the struggle, and a history of the wars. Many parts of 
the book are as interesting as a boys' book of adventure. His 
description of life in Egypt (Bk. II), for instance, and his history 
of the Persian invasion of Greece (Bk. VIII), are especially good. 
The successor of Herodotus as a writer of history was Thucyd- 
ides, who told the story of the great struggle between Athens 
and Sparta. His work is less entertaining than that of He- 
rodotus, but his narrative is much more accurate, and therefore 
much more like a modern history. Everything that he tells us 
we can accept as definitely ascertained fact. 

The third great Athenian historian was Xenophon, who lived 
from 431 B.C. to 355 B.C. In his younger days he took part in 
an expedition which penetrated into the heart of Persia. When 
the expedition met with disaster, he conducted "The Retreat 
of the Ten Thousand." Later on he wrote a thrilling account of 
the expedition, the Anabasis, which is still read by every boy and 
girl who takes up the study of Greek. The style of the story is 
simple, and the account of the expedition most interesting. 
Besides the Anabasis, Xenophon wrote a history of Greece from 
the point where Thucydides concluded his narrative, and several 
other books as well. 

The story of Greek literature has now been almost concluded. 
Greek literature is distinctly modern in character. Greek poets, 
Greek historians, and Greek story tellers have served as models in 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY 57 

every country in western Europe from the days of the glory of 
Athens down to the present time. Poets and story tellers and 
historians still study them as models, and Greek literature will 
probably last to the end of civilization. 

In one other respect the people of ancient Athens were ex- 
tremely modern. They loved to inquire into the " why and where- 
fore" of everything that happened. They were not content to 
accept things on faith. They were "lovers of the vision of 
truth. " They flocked about their great teachers, eager to learn. 
They were interested in man and his surroundings, his religion, 
his politics, and his morals; and they would listen for hours to 
men who could satisfy their curiosity about the relation of 
human beings to each other, and about the causes of life. 

Three names of such teachers or philosophers (lovers of knowl- 
edge) ought to be remembered: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. 
Socrates lived in the most glorious period of Athenian history 
(469-399 B.C.). He devoted his days to showing his pupils that 
man learns most by studying his own experiences. His motto was 
"Know thyself, " and he asked question after question to discover 
whether men understood the real meaning of such words as justice, 
virtue, courage, beauty, and temperance. He did not devote any 
of his time to writing, but like the best of modern teachers, he 
trained a number of young men to Uve better and happier lives. 

Plato was the greatest pupil of Socrates. After the death of his 
master, he spent a number of years in travel and then settled 
down in Athens as a teacher. We know more about him than 
about his master because he devoted much time to writing. 
He developed his philosophy in a series of Dialogues in which 
Socrates was the chief speaker. He explained hfe to his pupils 
on the theory that the most important thing is not what we do 
or say, but what we think of things. 

Just as Plato was the greatest pupil of Socrates, so Aristotle was 
the "mind of Plato's school." Plato, we are told, had the soul 
of a poet. He loved the spiritual, the beautiful, and the good. 
But Aristotle, when he grew up, developed into a hard-headed, 
practical teacher. He spent his days studying and arranging 



58 GREEK CIVILIZATION 

everything that men had discovered about the earth and its 

creatures. His writings are a series of textbooks on the sciences — 

astronomy, zoology, botany, and psychology, — on government, 

sociology, and economics, on the writing of prose and poetry; in 

short, on all things which engaged the attention of men. Aristotle 

was not interested in abstract questions; he devoted his life to 

studying facts. In consequence, his writings were used and are 

still used by hundreds of school masters. Even to this day, 

many boys in Europe and America study his writings and arrange 

their knowledge according to the method laid down in his books. 

Aristotle was not as deep a thinker as Plato, but his influence 

has been many times greater because his writings have been 

much more easily understood. 

Greek life and government and literature have all influenced 

our modern life very profoundly. But in nothing does the world 

owe so much to ancient Athens as in the field of art. The 
Greek iart 

Greeks began by copying their buildings from those of 

earlier civilized nations, but they ended by developing a style all 
their own. On the Acropolis in Athens, during the height of the 
city's glory, there was probably the most beautiful group of 
buildings that has ever existed in the history of the world. Chief 
among these was the Parthenon, the temple of the goddess Athena, 
which has served as a model for thousands of structures erected 
in Europe and America. Every one has seen pictures of the 
Parthenon and of other Greek temples. Every large city in' 
America has at least half a dozen buildings modeled after Greek 
temples. A close examination of the scheme of their structure, 
their columns, and their ornaments will reveal the reason why 
no modern architect has ever been able to improve upon the 
Greek style. 

In every part of Greece, on the street corners, in the market 
places, in public gardens, and in the temples, were wonderful 
statues made of marble and of bronze. The walls of the temples 
and other public buildings were decorated with sculptured orna- 
ments, figures of gods and men and animals so lifelike and so 
beautiful that artists have studied them as models ever since. 



GREEK CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION 59 

The visitor in Greece in the year 300 B.C. would have seen all 
these sculptures in their^ perfection. He would have seen the 
work of Phidias, who is recognized as the world's greatest 
sculptor, on the walls of the Parthenon and in the giant statue 
of Athena on the Acropolis. He would have seen the statue 
of the Venus of Melos, and of Hermes and the young Dionysus. 
To-day the originals or copies of these statues and sculptures 
can still be seen in museums. Most of them are badly scarred or 
broken, but in spite of that, no sculptors in all the world's 
history have produced work which excels that which was done 
in Athens when Phidias and his successors were alive. 

For all these reasons, Greece has often been called the most 
modern of all ancient countries. Except for their religion and 
their habits and customs and their lack of knowledge of science, 
these men of Athens who lived over two thousand years ago Qj-eek con- 
were not so very different from those who live in America tributions to 
to-day. They had the same love of freedom and the same 
right to share in the government. They believed just as 
earnestly that every free man is entitled to an education. They 
were just as eager for knowledge; they were just as intelligent; 
they had the same love of athletics and the same pride in 
cleanliness of body as we have to-day. Indeed there are very 
many people who believe that the world has gone backward in 
its appreciation of poetry and philosophy and architecture and 
sculpture, that the average citizen of Athens in the year 300 B.C. 
was a better judge of art and literature than the average man in 
New York or Chicago to-day. 

TOPICS AND REFERENCES 

Suggestive Topics. — (i) Would Greek history have been different if the 
islands had been west of Greece? Why? (2) Read the story of the Minotaur 
in Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales and see how much history you can 
gather from it. (3) How does the position of women in Homeric times 
compare with their position now? (4) Why did Sparta contribute practically 
nothing to Greek civilization? (5) Do you see any connection between the 
victory of the Greeks over the Persians and the development of later Greek 
civilization? (6) Compare the Greek ships in the harbor of Piraeus with those 



6o GREEK CIVILIZATION 

in the harbor of New York. (7) Why did the people in Athens have so much 
more leisure than people in modern times? (8) Would you have liked to go 
to school in ancient Athens? (9) Do you enjoy the stories of the Greek 
heroes told in the Iliad and the Odyssey? Why? (10) Write a description 
of a building in your city which is modeled after a building in ancient Greece. 

Search Topics. — (i) The King's Palaces in Crete. Hawes & Hawes, 
Crete, the Forerunner of Greece, pp. 46-75. — (2) Visit of Ulysses to the 
Ph^.acians. Odyssey (Butcher & Lang), Books V and VI. — (3) The De- 
feat OF THE Persians by the Greeks. Herodotus (Rawlinson), Vol. iii, 
Book VI, Chapters 90-122; Davis, Readings in Ancient History, Vol. I, pp. 
151-158, 165-175, 185-190. — (4) Athenian Shipping and Trade. Tucker, 
Life in Ancient Athens, pp. 79-81 ; Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 235- 
238. — ■ (5) Greek Religious Games. Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, 
pp. 100-105; Mahaffy, Old Greek Life, pp. 76-80. — (6) The Education of 
Greek Boys and Girls. Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 72-89; 
Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, pp. 155-174. — (7) The Life of Women 
AND Girls in Ancient Athens. Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 
119-126; Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, pp. 155-174. — (8) A Day in the 
Theatre of Dionysus. Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 63-64; 112- 
115; Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, pp. 224-235. — (9) Inside a Greek 
House. Mahaffy, Old Greek Life, Chapter III; Tucker, Life in Ancient 
Athens, Chapter V. — (10) A Description of the Acropolis in Athens. 
Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 48-56; Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, 
PP- 31-38. 

General Reading. — Chas. Seignobos, History of Ancient Civilization, 
Scribner, 1906. C. H. & H. B. Hawes, Crete, The Forerunner of Greece, 
Harper, 1911. S. H. Butcher & A. Lang, The Odyssey of Homer, Macmillan, 
1881. T. G. Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, Macmillan, 1914. C. B. Gulick, 
The Life of the Ancient Greeks, Appleton, 1902. J. P. Mahaffy, Old Greek Life, 
Appleton, 1889. W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History, Vol. I, AUyn & 
Bacon, 1912. G. W. & L. S. Botsford, Source Book of Ancient History, Mac- 
millan, 1912. F. W. Fling, Source Book of Greek History, Heath, 1907. 



. CHAPTER IV 
THE SPREAD OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION INTO THE WEST 

The history of civilization has been a history of westward 
movements. From the time of the earhest records down to the 
present century the spread of culture has been steadily from gpread of 
east to west. In the second chapter of this book we learned civilization 
of the origins of organized governments and of the be- 
ginnings of trade and commerce and art and literature in the basin 
of the Tigris-Euphrates and in the valley of the Nile, The 
dominion of the eastern nations was over by the year 500 B.C. 
From that time on for some 300 or 350 years the chief center 
of ancient civilization was Athens in Greece. Even while Athens 
was at the height of its glory, however, a rude, uncultivated 
race of warriors in Italy was slowly growing in power. This race 
was ultimately to conquer and rule the entire Mediterranean 
basin and the lands to the east and north. 

The peninsula of Italy extends southeastward from the main- 
land of Europe for some six or seven hundred miles. It lies 
almost exactly in the middle of the Mediterranean, and, with The Italian 
the island of Sicily, it practically divides the sea into two pemnsula 
great inland lakes. 

In many respects, Italy is geographically different from Greece. 
Its coasts are much less indented. The surrounding seas are 
almost entirely devoid of small islands. Then, too, while the 
mountains of Greece run in all directions and divide the land 
into a number of comparatively small, isolated regions, the 
mountains of Italy are regular and divide the peninsula into 
three well-defined parts. 

In the north, between the Alps and the Apennines, is an exten- 
sive valley drained by the river Po. This valley is rich and 
fertile, but for many centuries the Apennines served as a barrier, 

61 



62 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

and in ancient times the Po valley was not reckoned as a part 
of Italy at all. It was inhabited by a race similar in language 
and customs to those who lived north and west of the Alps. 
These people were known as the Gauls. 

The Apennines join the Alps near the source of the Po and 
extend eastward till, some forty or fifty miles from the Adriatic, 
they turn southeast and follow the coast almost down to the 
"heel of the boot." Thus they divide Italy proper into two parts. 
East of the mountains, the land was barren and forbidding. 
There were no harbors of any size. In the west and south, the 
land was much more favorable to agriculture and grazing. Three 
or four good harbors were open to the traders who came from 
' Phoenicia and Gr.eece. 

When the history of Italy opens, the land west of the moun- 
tains was inhabited by three races — the Etruscans, the Italians, 
Races in and the Greeks. 

ancient The Etruscans lived in the valley of the Arno. At 

^ one time they seem to have overrun the peninsula as far 

south as the Bay of Naples. These Etruscans developed the 
earliest civilization in Italy. Their farms were watered by irriga- 
tion canals; their cities were drained by well-built sewers. They 
constructed excellent roads and erected majestic buildings. They 
traded with the Greeks and Phoenicians. They possessed a 
written language; but for us most of their history is a mystery, 
because thus far no man has been able to decipher what they 
wrote. 

The Italians lived in the plains south of the Tiber and in the 
hill country eastward. The tribes just south of the river were 
known as Latins. Those in the hills were called Sabines, Sam- 
nites, and Umbrians. In earliest times these Italians were 
shepherds and farmers — rude, uncultivated people who learned 
the graces of civilized life slowly from their Etruscan neighbors 
and from the Greek traders who had settled in the southern part 
of the peninsula (see page 41). 

The entire territory of the Latins was not more than thirty or 
forty miles square, but the land was fertile and the people were 



BEGINNINGS OF ROME 



63 




Early Tribes of Italy 



industrious. In the lowlands were fields of wheat and oats and 
barley. On the hills, flocks of sheep and goats roamed under the 
watchful eyes of their owners. The people, according to tradi- 
tion, lived in thirty towns or villages, each on a hill or on a 
group of hills. 

One of these towns was Rome, situated on the Tiber about 
fifteen miles from its mouth. Imagine a cluster of two or three 
hundred round, thatched huts each consisting of one room. Beginnings 
and a few dozen wooden or stone houses, perched on the °^ ^ome 
tops of the steep hills overlooking the river, and you will have 
a picture of the beginning of the city which in later centuries 
was to rule the ancient Mediterranean world. 

W. Anc. Civ. — 5 



64 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

Just below the hills of Rome, the river was shallow, and 

travelers and herdsmen wandering north and south through 

Italy used this spot as a crossing. Undoubtedly they stopped to 

trade and barter with the Romans, and thus the city gradually 

grew in importance until it was chief among the Latin towns. 

"Not without good reason," says the Roman historian Livy, "did 

gods and men select this place for founding a city: these most 

healthful hills, this convenient river, equally adapted to inland 

and maritime trade, near to the sea and yet not exposed to danger 

from foreign fleets — a situation in the center of Italy ; a situa- 

" tion adapted by nature to become the greatest city in the world." 

The city of Rome, so the legend tells us, was founded by 

Romulus in 753 B.C. But this date is practically worthless. 

Pe le of There is evidence in the ruins of old buildings that the 

ancient town was much older than that. Until 509 B.C., so the 

Rome legend continues, the city was ruled by Romulus and his 

successors; then the kings were driven out, and the patricians, 

the aristocrats of the city, established a republic governed by 

two consuls, a senate made up of the elders of the patrician 

families, and an assembly in which all the men of the city took 

part. 

Even in 509 B.C., Rome was still a small town inhabited 
almost altogether by a race of farmers and shepherds. A few 
of the people were workers in metal and builders and weavers 
and makers of pottery; but on the whole the city was the home 
of a group of farmers who pastured their flocks and tilled their 
fields in the lowlands and returned to the hills at night to avoid 
the fevers and the wild beasts of the marshes along the banks of 
the river. 

The city proper was located on a group of seven hills, among 
which the Palatine, the Aventine, and the Capitoline were the 
most important. The first was the aristocratic quarter of the 
city; the second was the home of the plebeians, the poorer people 
and the foreigners; the third, corresponding to the Acropolis at 
Athens, was the seat of the government, the site of the city's chief 
temples, and the citadel. 



THEIR RELIGION 65 

The religion of these early Romans was such as one might 
expect to find among a race of farmers and shepherds. They 
made sacrifices to the powers of nature: the wind, the sun, Their 
the warmth of summer, and the cold of winter. But the religion 
Roman also worshiped a number of gods who were the presiding 
geniuses of his race: Jupiter, the ruler of gods and men, who 
caused the people to prosper or to suffer; Mars, who brought 
victory or defeat in war; Vesta, the patroness of all domestic 
virtues. Each of the gods and goddesses had his or her own 
group of priests or priestesses. In addition there was a special 
body of soothsayers, or augurs, whose duty it was to consult the 
■ gods through such signs as the flight of birds and the entrails of 
sacrificed animals in order that the citizens might not sin against 
their will. Besides the national gods, each Roman family had 
its own household gods called Lares and Penates, who represented 
the honor of the family and to whom the Roman owed allegiance 
almost before the gods of the state. 

Among the free inhabitants of Rome, the patricians alone had 
full rights of citizenship. Other men in the city could vote and 
could hold property, but only the patricians could hold the ^^^^ ^ city 
chief offices of state. They claimed that they alone were state like 
descendants of the original founders of the city. The rest of ^ ^°^ 
the population, the plebeians, were small farmers or artisans who 
had migrated into Roman territory for protection or had been 
conquered as the Roman city state expanded. 

Later on, when they grew richer and more numerous, the 
plebeians made a great fight for equal rights with the patricians. 
This fight lasted over two centuries. By the year 300 B.C., the 
distinction between patrician and plebeian had practically dis- 
appeared. Still, the equalization of the two orders did not reach 
down to the lowest ranks of society. Throughout Roman his- 
tory, the poorer plebeians, the small farmers and the workmen 
of the city, had very little share in the government. They could 
vote but they could not hold offices, and therefore the Roman re- 
public was not such a government as ours, — in which all classes 
have equal rights and privileges, and all men may aspire to hold 



66 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

office, — but a government in which a comparatively few citi- 
zens monopoHzed all the honors of state. 

There is an old saying, "Rome was not built in a day." Hun- 
dreds of years had to pass before Rome became the greatest city 
Conquest of in the world. In the year 509 B.C., Rome was merely the 
Italy chief town in Latium, the country of the Latins. It took 

nearly two hundred and fifty years before Italy was conquered. 
Time and again hostile armies penetrated into Latin territory and 
even to the very walls of Rome. Every year Roman armies were 
organized and marched out against one or another of their foes. 
From the foothills and mountain passes of the Apennines and 
from the plains of southern Italy came news of battles and sieges. 
Often the Roman armies were beaten, but the people were dogged 
and determined; they absolutely refused to acknowledge defeat. 
Consequently, one tribe after another was conquered, till, in 
275 B.C., not one independent city was left in Italy from the 
Apennines to the Greek territory along the southern coast. 
Rome was mistress of the entire peninsula from the Apennines on 
the north to the southern sea. 

But the conquest of Italy was only a beginning. Beyond the 
peninsula were other lands, rich and prosperous, whose people 
The war carried on trade with all parts of the known world. Across 
with the Mediterranean, for instance, on the promontory where 

age Africa approaches nearest to Sicily, was a city called Car- 
thage which had been settled by Phoenician traders five or six 
hundred years before. While the Romans were extending their 
power over Italy, the Carthaginians had made themselves masters 
of the trade of the western Mediterranean. When Rome finally 
conquered the Greek cities of southern Italy, the Carthaginians 
■ were trading in every part of the Mediterranean. All of north- 
western Africa, the coasts of Spain, and the islands near it, were 
subject to their dominion. Only the Greek cities in Sicily had 
escaped their influence, and now these cities, too, were in danger of 
falling into their hands. So the Greek cities of Sicily appealed 
to the Romans, and war between Rome and Carthage began. 
The history of the three Punic wars (Punic is from the Latin 



CONQUEST OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 67 

word for Carthaginian or Phoenician) is perhaps the most interest- 
ing story in Roman history. It is full of accounts of deeds of brav- 
ery, of great sea fights and land battles. It includes the story of 
the career of Hannibal, who, with Alexander and Julius Caesar, is 
reckoned as one of the three great military heroes of antiquity. 
Its climax is the battle of Zama, which was fought in northern 
Africa near the city of Carthage in 202 B.C. On the eve of this 
battle the Roman and Carthaginian soldiers in their camps felt 
that the crisis in the history of the ancient world had come. In 
the words of the Roman historian Livy, "Before the following 
night, they said, they would know whether Rome or Carthage was 
to give laws to the world; not Africa nor Italy, but the whole 
world was to be the prize of victory." The Carthaginians were 
defeated, and Rome became mistress of the western Mediterra- 
nean world. 

The Punic wars are important because they mark the begin- 
ning of the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin. When 
these wars began, the Romans were still an agricultural people. 
When they ended, Roman ships, instead of those of the Cartha- 
ginians, were trading in all the cities of the ancient Mediterranean 
world. 

In 199 B.C., three years after the battle of Zama, a Roman 
army crossed the Adriatic and began a campaign against the king 
of Macedonia. This was the beginning of the wars against conauest of 
the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean: Macedonians, the ancient 
Greeks, Syrians, and Egyptians. "These wars," according ^""^ 
to Livy, "are not to be compared to the war with Carthage, either 
in danger to the Roman state or in the abilities of the commanders, 
or in the valor of the soldiers, but are, perhaps, more remarkable 
on account of the renown of the former kings and the ancient fame 
of the nations." They lasted approximately 150 years. When 
they were over, the Roman republic was in control of an em- 
pire greater in extent than that of the Assyrians or the Persians. 
It stretched from the Euphrates River to the Atlantic Ocean; 
it included every country bordering on the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. 



70 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

Meanwhile the Roman armies were gradually making their way 
northward and westward into the lands of the barbarians. First, 
Rome carried her conquests north into the Po valley and extended 
her dominions to the foothills of the Alps. It took the imperial 
city almost a century to establish peace among the half civilized 
tribes of Sardinia, Corsica, Spain, and northern Africa; but when 
the work was finally accomplished, the benefits of Roman civiliza- 
tion made all the bloodshed and tribulations worth while. 

The valley of the Rhone River, too, was conquered; and, in 
58 B.C., Julius Caesar, the greatest^ general in Roman history, 
marched his armies into the .heart of Gaul (modern France). 
For six years he fought one battle after another. Those of you 
who are studying Latin know something about his campaigns. 
When the wars were over, the Roman dominion extended north- 
ward to the English Channel and to the banks of the Rhine. 

The campaigns of Caesar are among the most important in the 
history of the world. Down to his time, the world's civilization 
The Romans ^^^ confined to the Mediterranean basin and the lands of 
in central the east; by his campaigns, central Europe was opened, 
"'^"^^ and the culture of centuries was introduced into the west- 

ern lands beyond the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. The 
conquests of Caesar, therefore, are the first link in the chain which 
binds the ancient to the modern world. 

After the death of Julius Caesar, still more territory was added 
to the Roman empire. First the lands south of the Danube 
were conquered. Then, "the whole extent of Germany was 
traversed by our army;" says a Roman historian, "nations 
were conquered almost unknown to us by name. In short, 
what had never before been hoped for, much less attempted, was 
accomplished; the Roman army carried its standards to the 
distance of the Elbe." But this territory was lost by the Romans 
in 9 A.D., and they never again succeeded in getting a foothold 
beyond the Rhine. Nevertheless, they did extend their domin- 
ions into the island of Britain and into the region north of the 
Danube where the modern Hungarians and Roumanians live. 
Thus, when the Roman empire was at its greatest extent, about 



THE CITIZENS OF ROME * 7 1 

the year 120 a.d., it stretched from Scotland to the African 
desert, from the Atlantic Ocean to the highlands beyond the 
Tigris River. 

In 509 B.C., and for nearly five hundred years thereafter, Rome 
was a republic, but not such a republic as that which exists in 
the United States to-day. Even in Rome itself by no The citizens 
means all the people were citizens. But the Romans were °^ Rome 
more liberal in allowing foreigners to obtain the privilege of 
citizenship than the Athenians had been. Consequently, the 
number of voters grew constantly larger, and the conquered 
peoples of Italy were willing to accept the Romans as their rulers. 
Citizens had the right of voting and of holding ofl&ce; they alone 
had the full protection of the laws. All others depended for 
their peace and safety upon the protection which the Romans 
were willing to give. 

Among the citizens of the repubhc, there were at least three 
classes. In the first rank were the nobles, those who held the 
chief ofifices of government. In theory, .any citizen might T^ree 
be elected to any position in the gift of the city, but as a classes of 
matter of fact only the members of a very few old families " ^^^"^ 
€ver were honored in this way. For generation after generation, 
sons followed their fathers in the chief offices; only on rare occa- 
sions did a member of a non-noble family succeed in being elected 
to one of the chief offices of state. 

Next in order after the nobles came the rich merchants, bank- 
ers and capitalists. These men created most of the wealth and 
carried on most of the trade for which Rome became famous, 
but they were rarely leaders in the army or holders of office 
Once in a while, one of their number was elected to an important 
position. But the nobles resented the success of such a "new 
man" and did their best to prevent him from advancing. If he 
succeeded in spite of this opposition, his sons and grandsons 
gradually became identified with the governing class; in other 
words, they became nobles in their turn. 

The vast majority of the Romans were, of course, just common 
people — small farmers and shopkeepers and workmen who had 



72 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

the privilege of taking part in the assemblies but who never 
thought of offering themselves as candidates for any office of state. 
By no means all citizens of Rome dwelt in the city or in its 
immediate vicinity. As the neighboring tribes were conquered, 
Roman some of the people were admitted to citizenship. Besides, 

military very early in Roman history, a custom was adopted of 
' ° ° ^ planting military posts or colonies in the neighborhood of 

Rome's enemies. The members of these colonies settled in the 
country, cleared farms for themselves, and gradually became 
permanent residents in districts many miles from the city of their 
birth. There were Roman colonies all over Italy. The colonists 
had all the rights of Roman citizens; they could vote in the as- 
semblies, they could even hold office, but as a matter of fact they 
seldom made use of their privileges because it was too difficult to 
get to the city where the meetings of the assemblies and the elec- 
tions took place. The important thing to remember, however, 
is that the Romans were the first people in the history of the 
world to extend the privilege of citizenship to people who lived 
outside the border of the original territory which they occupied. 
By the end of the period which we are studying, there were Roman 
citizens in all parts of Italy and even in lands beyond the sea. 

Practically all the tribes in Italy which were not admitted to 
Ronian citizenship were allowed to retain their own form of 

government. They elected their own officers and made 
Italian allies 

their. own laws. They did not even have to pay taxes to 

their conquerors. These tribes were called allies. Only two 
things were required of them: they must not enter into agree- 
ments with each other or with outside nations, and they must 
furnish soldiers to fight in the armies which were sent out against 
the enemies of Rome. 

In the lands outside the peninsula of Italy, a new system of 

government was established. In Sicily and Sardinia and Corsica, 

People in the in Spain and northern Africa, in Macedonia and Greece 

provinces ^j^(j Agjg^ Minor, in Gaul and Britain, indeed in every part 

of the empire outside of Italy, the Romans created provinces. 

The people in these provinces, except in the case of a few indi- 



THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 73 

viduals, were neither allies nor Roman citizens. They were 
not allowed to serve in the armies. They had no share in the 
Roman government. They had no right of self-government. 
Instead they, were obliged-to pay tribute and to obey the orders 
of a Roman governor who commanded a standing army which 
was stationed in the province. The governor made all the laws 
for the province and collected the taxes in any way that he 
saw fit. In consequence, the people were often cruelly treated 
and very much oppressed. 

For almost five hundred years (509 B.C.-27 B.C.), as we have 
just learned, the government of Rome was a republic. The 
body of citizens — at least those near enough to the city The Roman 
to attend the meetings of the assemblies — elected the republic 
officers and took part in making the laws. The Romans never 
worked out a system of representative government such as 
that with which we are familiar. Every man had to attend 
the meetings of the assemblies or lose his vote. 

In theory, all the laws of Rome were passed by the assemblies; 
as a matter of fact most of the laws were made by a body of some 
300 nobles called the senate. According to the Roman law 
the senate was not a lawmaking body at all. It was merely an 
advisory council made up mostly of men who had held offices 
in the republic, but the influence of these men was so great that 
what the senate decided was best for the city the assemblies 
ratified and gave the sanction of law. 

The chief officers of the republic were the two consuls. They 
were the chief executives; they commanded the armies in Italy 
and presided over the meetings of the assemblies. They were 
elected annually, but were rarely chosen to succeed themselves. 
Besides the consuls there were a number of other officers elected 
by the people, whose names we need not try to remember. 

About the Roman government under the republic these three 
things should be kept in mind: (i) the assembhes which made 
the laws and elected the officers were made up of all the Roman 
citizens who cared to attend; (2) the senate composed of nobles 
really determined what laws were to be made; the assemblies 



74 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

merely carried out its will; (3) the chief officers, the two con- 
suls and their assistants, were elected by the assemblies, but 
after they were elected they consulted the will of the senate and 
not the will of the people. The government by the people was 
therefore much more important in law than in fact. 

The Roman army, as we have already learned, fought its way 
from the city on the banks of the Tiber eastward to the banks 
The Roman of the Tigris River, westward to the Atlantic Ocean, and 
army northward to the highlands of Scotland. In its beginning, 

the army was a sort of citizen militia. Each man in Rome might 
be called on any summer to march out under the consuls against 
the enemies of the city. Every soldier had to furnish his own 
arms and equipment. Every one served without pay. Later 
on, when the campaigns lasted longer, men were regularly en- 
rolled in the army and were forced to serve for two or three 
years. By that time the soldiers received regular pay. All 
through the history of the republic every man, in theory, was 
subject to military service, but as a matter of fact the armies were 
regularly recruited from among the poorer classes. The class of 
nobles and rich merchants furnished the officers only, or else 
served in the cavalry. 

When the city of Rome began its long fight against Carthage 
(264 B.C.), the system of government described in the last para- 
Effect of graphs was working wonderfully well. It was serving 
Roman con- admirably for the government of the city and of the Latin 
ques s territory. The nobles and common people alike were loyal 

to their city. They were unselfish in their service in the army 
and happy in their life on their farms. The Roman citizens, 
scattered through the peninsula, were proud of their ancestors 
and of the privilege of being reckoned as members of the assem- 
blies even though they seldom travelled to Rome to vote. The 
Italian allies were contented. Rome allowed them so much 
freedom of action that they were rarely disloyal to the republic 
and cheerfully furnished their share of troops. 

One hundred and fifty years later, when the Roman armies 
had conquered most of the people Hving along the shores of the 



EFFECT OF ROMAN CONQUESTS 75 

Mediterranean, everything was changed. The government, 
especially of the provinces which had been created, was far 
from perfect. The governors .were unreasonable and cruel. 
They showed contempt for the laws and customs of the people. 
They made arrests, cast people into prison, and executed them 
as they pleased. They gathered huge fortunes at the expense 
of the provincials; they forced rich men to pay them enormous 
sums of money; they plundered the treasuries of Greek and 
Asiatic cities; they removed statues and jewels from the temples 
and carried them off to Rome. At the end of their term of one 
year in ofiEice, many of them returned to the city rich enough to live 
in luxury for the rest of their lives. The people in Sicily and Africa, 
in Greece and Asia Minor, had no affection for their masters. 

Meanwhile the people in Italy had deteriorated. Constant war 
had gradually drawn off the best and most vigorous men of the 
population. Soldiering became a regular profession. Instead 
of enlisting for short terms of service, men entered the army for 
life. Besides that, during the Punic wars when Italy was in- 
vaded by Hannibal, thousands of farms were ruined; men and 
women abandoned the country and sought safety in the towns. 
Add to these conditions the fact that after the conquest of Sicily 
and Sardinia and of northern Africa it was cheaper to import 
grain than to raise it in Italy, and you will understand why great 
tracts of land which once had been cultivated by small farmers 
were turned over to great land proprietors who used them for 
sheep ranges and extensive olive plantations which were tended 
by slaves. 

Thousands of slaves were sent to Italy as the result of the 
wars. There is a story that 10,000 men and women were sold 
in one day in one of the principal slave markets. To own a 
thousand or fifteen hundred slaves was not uncommon, and a 
man who had only two or three slaves was considered poor. 
Consequently there was little work left for freemen to do in 
the country, and they and their families drifted into the towns. 
Before the Punic wars Rome was still a small city; when the 
wars were over it completely covered the seven hills. 



76 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

The old republican government Had ceased to be a model. The 

consuls and their assistants, instead of being honest, self-sacrificing 

Decline of officials, were frequently corrupt politicians who secured 

the Roman their offices by giving the people bribes. Naturally, the 

repu ic senate was no better because, as you remember, it was made 

up of the same class of men. The common people had ceased to 

take pride in their city. The few small farmers who still lived in 

the country practically never attended the assembhes, and the 

workmen and idlers in the city were interested only in securing 

a high price for their votes. 

For one hundred and nineteen years longer (146 B.C.-27 B.C.), 
the republican government continued in existence, but these 
were years of frequent civil war and revolution. At first, a 
sincere attempt was made to reform the constitution, to restore 
the old order of things when the common people and the nobles 
had worked side by side for the glory and honor of the republic. 
In 133 B.C., a young man named Tiberius Gracchus tried to 
reestablish the old Roman agricultural system under which each 
citizen had devoted himself to farming, by redistributing the land 
in Italy, but the nobles who held the land refused to give up their 
possessions, and Tiberius Gracchus was killed. Ten years later, 
Gaius Gracchus, his younger brother, tried to break down the 
political power of the nobles by offering additional privileges to 
the great merchant class of the city, but he, too, was killed in a 
riot, and the nobles continued their rule. 

Meanwhile conditions in the provinces and even in Italy were 

steadily growing more unbearable. Civil war and revolutions 

Civa wars became more and more frequent. In no B.C., Rome was 

and revo- iorced to make war on Jugurtha, a king of a tributary 

" ^°°^ people in northern Africa. In that war, Marius, the son 

of a poor Roman laborer, who had risen from the ranks in the 

army, became the hero of the Roman people. He succeeded in 

putting down the revolt in northern Africa, and, in loi B.C., he 

drove back a horde of German barbarians who had penetrated 

into the Roman provinces and were threatening an invasion of 

Italy. 



THE END OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 77 

Marius was hailed as the greatest man in the empire. During 
the next ten or fifteen years he took up the cause of the common 
people and fought their battles against the nobles, who were led 
by a man named Sulla. First Marius and then Sulla succeeded 
in gaining control of the government, but neither man was able 
to bring peace and quiet to the empire for any length of time. 

After the death of Marius and Sulla a young man named 
Pompey succeeded in getting control of the Roman armies, but 
Pompey was not strong enough to manage the empire by himself. 
In 60 B.C., he joined forces with Crassus and Julius Caesar. 
This political alliance is known as the First Triumvirate; the 
three men divided the honors and power of the Roman republic 
among them and for ten years they controlled the fortunes of the 
Roman state. 

In 49 B.C., the alliance was broken. Caesar had been building 
up a great miUtary power for himself in Gaul, and he marched 
his soldiers into Italy and made war on Pompey. Pompey was 
forced to flee into Greece and Macedonia, where his army was 
defeated. A few months later he himself was murdered on the 
banks of the Nile and Caesar became the head of the Roman 
empire for the time. 

Cffisar did his best to restore order and quiet, but there were 
still men in Rome who refused to admit that the old Roman 
republic was dead. In 44 B.C., Caesar was murdered by a ^^^ ^^^ ^^ 
band of conspirators led by Brutus and Cassius, who hoped the Roman 
to reestablish the rule of the senate, but a group of three ^^^^ 
men, Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius, formed a Second 
Triumvirate and took up the work which Caesar had begun. In 
42 B.C., Cassius and Brutus were defeated in battle; Lepidus 
dropped out of the Triumvirate; and soon after, a struggle be- 
tween Antony and Octavius began. In 31 B.C., Antony and 
Octavius met in a naval battle off the promontory of Actium on 
the west coast of Greece; Octavius was the victor, and four years 
later, in 27 B.C., he returned to Rome and assumed the powers of 
an emperor under the title of Augustus, which he continued to 
hold for the rest of his life. 



yS ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

The form of government which Augustus established lasted for 

several centuries. Under it, absolute power was vested in one 

Establish- T^SiTi. He made all the laws for the government of the 

ment of the empire; he levied the armies and appointed their com- 

empire manders; his representatives collected all the taxes and 

carried out all the laws. Directly or indirectly he appointed all 

the governors of provinces. They held office during his pleasure 

and were responsible only to him. 

As long as he lived, he was sole master of the Roman dominions. 
When he died, in theory, the senate chose his successor. In fact, 
the choice was nearly always dictated either by the emperor him- 
self or by the army. The army was now the most important 
factor in the government of the empire. Not that the rule of the 
army was ordinarily oppressive. In all the vast territory governed 
by the emperor there were less than 400,000 soldiers, and nearly 
all of these were stationed in remote parts of the empire to keep 
back the hordes of barbarians, wild tribes of the African desert, 
half-civilized Germans and Britains, and mountain tribes of the 
east. In Rome itself, there were only 10,000 soldiers — picked 
troops who accompanied the emperor on journeys and watched 
over his personal estates. These were the men who ordinarily 
selected the emperors, though in later times even the armies in 
the provinces took part in making the choice. 

The chief thing to remember about the government of the 
empire is that the distinction between Rome and Italy and the 
provinces gradually ceased to exist. All parts of the empire 
shared with Rome in the benefits of the imperial system; Rome 
was merely the capital; everywhere from the Atlantic to the 
Euphrates, from the North Sea to the African desert, all men 
were treated practically alike. 

Suppose we try now to picture to ourselves the life of the 
Roman empire when conditions were at their best. In studying 
The imperial the story of Greek civilization, we needed very little 
"*y- besides a description of the city of Athens; to under- 

stand the civilization of the Roman empire we shall have to make 
a journey all over the Roman world. 



THE IMPERIAL CITY 



79 



We shall begin by visiting the capital. We have come, let 
us suppose, from some distant part of the empire, — from Alexan- 
dria in Egypt or Antioch in Syria, — and have landed at Ostia, at 
the mouth of the river Tiber, and have made our way up the river 
eighteen miles in a boat. We disembark at the wharves which 




The City of Rome during the Later Empire 



lie at the foot of the Aventine and take the street which skirts 
this hill and the Palatine into the Forum, the center of all the life 
of Rome. The street is called the Via Sacra (Sacred Street) 
because it leads up to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline 
hill. Along the Via Sacra and into the ternple of Jupiter all the 
processions in honor of great Roman victories wended their 
way. 



8o ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

We pass the great Circus Maximus, and the palaces of the 

emperors which are situated on top of the Palatine hill. Just 

before we enter the Forum, on our right, we see the Col- 
The Forum . . , . 

osseum, which, with the Circus Maximus, is the chief place 

of amusement in Rome. On our left is the little round temple 

of Vesta. In this temple six noble virgins for generation after 

generation have kept the sacred hearth fire of the city burning. 

No man except the high priest of the city may ever enter this 

temple, and no married woman may serve at its shrine. 

In the nine hundred years since the traditional founding of 
the city, we find that Rome has undergone many changes. 
Originally, it will be remembered, Rome was a village of mud 
huts and simple stone and wood houses; now, about 150 A.D., it 
is a great city of 1,500,000 or 2,000,000 inhabitants. In the old 
days, the Forum was the market place and the gathering place 
of the citizens; now it is the center of the government of the 
empire. It is crowded with magnificent buildings, temples, and 
monuments erected in honor of emperors, heroes, and gods. 

Just beyond the temple of Vesta we see the temple of Castor and 
Pollux, and beyond that the Basilica or Law Court built by Julius 
Caesar. This is the largest and most imposing building in the 
Forum. It is not only a law court but also a meeting place 
for merchants and bankers. In its corridors, and in the cor- 
ridors of the Basilica of ^milius on the opposite side of the 
Forum, we see these men engaged in planning the great business 
transactions of the Roman empire. 

At the north end of the Forum we pause before a great 
marble platform ornamented with stone or bronze rostra (beaks 
of ships). For this reason the platform is called the rostra. 
From it all important announcements and great public speeches are 
made. This is not the same rostra from which Brutus and Antony 
delivered the funeral orations made famous in Shakespeare's 
tragedy of Julius Casar but here similar speeches were made. 

Just behind the rostra we see a gilded stone column on which are 
inscribed the names of all the great roads leading out from Rome 
to all parts of the empire. The name of this pillar is the " Golden 



RETAIL SECTION OF ROME 8 1 

Milestone." From it all distances in the empire are reckoned, 
and some of these distances run into thousands of miles. 

The Forum is crowded with other buildings and monuments — 
statues of emperors and heroes, great stone arches and pillars, but 
we must continue on our way through the city. We take Retail 
the street which skirts the Capitoline hill and come out on section 
the Broad Way (Via Lata) which leads through the ancient ° °™® 
Campus Martius, once an open field, the mustering ground for 
Roman armies, now the chief retail business section of the city. 
Here we visit shops of jewelers and goldsmiths and silversmiths, 
sellers of tapestries and furniture and fine fabrics and all sorts of 
luxuries from Alexandria and Antioch, and even from India. The 
street is filled with rich men and women in flowing robes of scarlet 
and saffron and blue and purple, buying clothing and ornaments 
and furniture. 

Farther up the street we find a large enclosure surrounded 
by arcades where people are gathered for gossip and various 
athletic feats. Still farther on we see the great Mausoleum The 
(tomb) of Augustus, 220 feet high. Turning back and Pantheon 
crossing the Campus Martius, we arrive at the Pantheon, a 
great round building erected originally by the son-in-law of 
Augustus as a temple to all the gods. This building is perhaps 
the most interesting in the entire city. It represents a method of 
building original with the Romans. Its roof is constructed in the 
shape of a dome. Inside are colossal statues of gods. The ceil- 
ing is made to represent the sky with its stars. After 1900 years 
of use the building will still be standing when most of the ancient 
monuments in the city have long fallen into ruin and decay. 

We have seen scarcely a tenth of Rome's great public buildings. 
Nothing in modern times can compare with their magnificence. 
Marble and bronze and even gold and silver were gener- Roman 
ously used. The walls were covered with elaborate carving building 
and ornaments and painting, till scarcely a foot of blank space 
was left. Hundreds of statues and fountains occupied the open 
spaces in the city. There were baths and amphitheaters and 
circuses (open air courses for chariot racing). Everything was 



82 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

built so securely and so lavishly that the ruins of the ancient city 
are still the marvel of the modern world. 

The houses of many of the rich nobles and merchants were 

so magnificent that they almost beggar description. The palaces 

Houses of ^^ ^^^ emperor and his family occupied almost the entire 

rich Palatine. The other hills were crowded with houses and 

ci zens gardens belonging to rich nobles and merchants. Naturally, 

each of these houses was built to suit the taste of the owner. No 

two were exactly alike. Yet all of them conformed to a general 

style of architecture. The outer walls were usually plain and 

unpretentious, with only a few narrow windows looking out into 

the street. The streets were narrow and inconvenient, too narrow 

for wagons and carriages. In fact no horses were allowed on any 

of the streets of the city except during the night. 

One entered the house through a vestibule on the street level. 
A double door ornamented with bronze or ivory admitted the 
visitor to a passage which led directly into a great open room 
called the atrium. The room was two or three times as high as 
those to which we are accustomed. It was lighted by an opening 
in the center. Underneath was a pool or fountain into which 
water poured from the roof when it rained. The floor was made 
of various colored marbles or tiles. The walls were paneled in 
marble or decorated with paintings. There was very little furni- 
ture in this room. It was merely the anteroom where guests 
waited to be called into the reception room of the master, which 
was farther back in the house. 

Leading off from the atrium were a number of small rooms used 
for various household purposes. Back of it was a second, more 
private portion of the house. This centered about the peristyle, 
an open court surrounded with marble columns, decorated with 
statues and wall paintings, and furnished with expensive rugs, 
chairs, couches, tables, and lamps. In this part of the house 
were the bedrooms and dining rooms and library and kitchen. 
Behind it lay an enclosed garden, and perhaps even a private bath 
house fitted up as magnificently as the residence itself. The 
house had running water and sometimes even a system of hot-air 



TENEMENT HOUSES IN ROME 83 

heating, though this was by no means always the case. It lacked 
the modern convenience of lighting. Even the emperor himself 
had to be content with candles or with open lamps in which he 
burned oUve oil. 

These great houses were, of course, the exception just as much 
as the houses in the finer residential sections of our larger cities 
are the exception. The vast majority of Romans in the Tenement 
city lived in small, unpretentious houses or in tenements houses in 
not unlike the worst tenement houses in modern New York. °™^ 

These tenements were called islands because they frequently 
occupied an entire block of the city. They were three or four 
stories in height. On the ground floor were shops for the sale or 
manufacture of all sorts of articles: food, clothing, and house- 
hold utensils. Upstairs the tenements were divided into suites 
of one or two or three rooms. The corridors were dark and 
filthy. The houses had no toilet conveniences. Slops and 
garbage were dumped into the streets. The streets were crowded 
and dirty. Men, women, and children jostled one another. 
Street peddlers and beggars stood in the gutters. There was 
endless noise and confusion. Disastrous fires were frequent. 
Sometimes one of the older houses collapsed and hundreds of 
people were killed. Rome had no building laws or tenement 
house commission. The police did their best to maintain order, 
but they were more or less helpless in these crowded quarters 
and were forced to wink at many violations of the laws. 

One thing more about the outward aspect of the city is worth 
noting — that is the system of sewers and water supply. In 
very ancient days, the Romans had found it necessary to sewers and 
build conduits to drain the marshes which lay between the water 
seven hills. The greatest Roman sewer, the Cloaca Max- ^"^^^ 
ima, was constructed in the earliest days of the republic to drain 
the Forum. It served its purpose all through Roman history. 
It was so well constructed that it is used even in modern times. 

Next to its magnificent buildings, perhaps the chief glory of 
the ancient city was its abundant water supply. Back in the 
Apennine mountains, forty or more miles from Rome, streams 

W. Anc. Civ. — 6 



84 EOMAN CIVILIZATION 

and lakes were tapped so that the people might have all the 

water they wanted both for drinking and for bathing. Stretching 

for miles across the country were twenty or more aqueducts on 

huge arches, which brought this water into the city. The most 

famous of these aqueducts is that of Claudius, parts of which 

are still to be seen after the lapse of nearly 1900 years. 

In the ancient city of Rome there were four classes of people. 

First among these were the nobles, once the rulers of the empire, 

now the chief assistants of the emperor. From their ranks, 

The nobles '^ . , t ^^ I 

most of the governors of the provmces and the officers of 

the army were chosen. They sat in the senate, to which the em- 
peror still occasionally turned for advice. They were the leaders 
of Roman society. They had special seats in the theater, the cir- 
cus, and the amphitheater. Their wives set the fashion in dress. 
Next in order came the rich business men — bankers, whole- 
sale merchants, and large public contractors ^ whose transac- 

Rich busi- tions were not so very different from those of the Wall 

ness men Street operators of modern New York. These men were 
frequently organized into great stock companies with offices 
in or near the Forum, and with branches in the chief cities in 
the provinces. They took contracts for public buildings, roads, 
bridges, and aqueducts all over the empire. They lent money 
at interest to the emperor and to the governors of provinces. 
They managed the collection of taxes in Italy and the provinces. 
They controlled , the trade in grain and in many other com- 
modities — spices, rugs, jewels, precious metals, and the like. 
They owned many of the sailing vessels which made regular 
journeys from Italy to all parts of the Mediterranean. Socially, 
they were less prominent than the nobles, but the}/ were fre- 
quently endowed with more wealth. 

The third class embraced the great mass of the Roman people, 
the small shopkeepers and mechanics who supplied the needs 

Common of the people. They were butchers, grocers, and bakers; 

people carpenters, masons, and metal workers; shoemakers, 

weavers, and dyers; porters, messengers, and policemen. Add 
to them thousands of men who had no regular employment and 



SLAVES 85 

you will get some idea of the people of this class. It may surprise 
you to know that doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, and sculptors 
were also included among the common people. These were 
tenement dwellers. They lived on the simplest diet — grain and 
vegetables, onions, garlic and lentils, olive oil, and an occasional 
meal of bacon or pork sausage. They drank wine which cost 
what would now amount to two or three cents a gallon, liber- 
ally mixed with water. They wore the simplest clothing, a rough 
tunic, similar to that of the Greek workmen, and the roughest 
of sandals or shoes. 

The slaves made up the fourth class of people. Their occu- 
pations were as numerous as those of the common people. They 

were clerks, accountants, and messengers in business, work- 

• r ■ 1 1 , . , , • Slaves 

men m factories, and stone masons and bricklayers in 

building. They were dock hands and sailors and porters. 

Thousands of them were to be found out in the country working 

pn sheep ranges and farms. They were the sole domestic servants 

in the houses of rich merchants and nobles. They served as 

(^octors and teachers and artists. Many of them were better 

educated than their masters. It is almost impossible for us to 

get any idea of their numbers; but certainly there were thousands 

of them in the city of Rome alone. 

AU classes of people in Rome began the day early. This was 
due partly to the warm climate of Italy and partly to the fact 
that night life was difficult owing to the lack of good DaUy life 
artificial light. Noble, merchant, shopkeeper, and work- "^ Rome 
man were out of bed and at breakfast very soon after sunrise. 
Every one followed the custom, still in use in most parts of 
Europe, pf beginning the day with a very light breakfast. In 
place of the modern coffee and rolls, the Roman breakfasted on 
bread and a cup or two of diluted wine. 

After breakfast the working classes hurried off to their day's 
labor. The noble and the rich merchant waited at home to re- 
ceive visitors, men who came seeking social or business engage- 
ments. A group of them assembled in the great hall or atrium 
which often was crowded while the master of the house talked 



86 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

with one individual after another in his private office or recep- 
tion room. 

When the reception was over the Roman noble with his attend- 
ants walked, or was carried in his litter, — an ornamented chair 
borne by slaves, — to the Forum, to the palace of the emperor, or 
to the law courts, or perhaps to the office of his banker. He 
might even go to the Broad Way to make some purchase for him- 
self or his friends. If the day was a festival, he went to the 
theater or circus or amphitheater. He was never to be found 
in a place where men were at work with their hands. Manual 
labor in the eyes of the Roman was degrading. No one who 
could escape it ever engaged in work in a shop. 

Just before noon, the Forum and all other public places were 
gradually deserted. Even in the workshops, the noise of the 
hammer, the saw, and the loom ceased. Practically everybody 
in Rome now ate his luncheon of salad, nuts, fruits, bread, and 
vegetables, and then lay down for a nap for an hour or two. 

Later in the afternoon, the whole city was once more alive and 
stirring. Every one who could go was on his way to the " Baths." 
There were public bath houses in the city sufficient to accom- 
modate 65,000 or 75,000 people — great, splendid buildings open 
to every one who could pay the small price of admission. No 
matter how poor a man was, no matter how dark and dingy his 
home, he could spend his afternoon surrounded by luxury just 
as though he were rich. In the bath he found room after room 
fitted up with costly marbles and mosaics, gayly painted walls 
and ceilings, swimming pools, hot and cold water showers, sun 
parlors, and numerous lounging rooms. All this had been paid 
for by some emperor or by some rich Roman noble who had 
bequeathed it to the city for the people's use. 

When the bath was over, every one went home to dinner. 
For the poor man this usually consisted of bread and porridge, 
onions, lentils and garlic, and a cup of cheap diluted wine. The 
rich man's table was loaded with all kinds of fish, meat, vege- 
tables, sweetmeats, and fruits. The Roman bill of fare was most 
elaborate. It lacked one or two modern vegetables; it had no 



ROMAN WOMEN 87 

tea or coffee; but otherwise it was as rich and varied as that of 
modern times. 

The Roman woman held a position distinctly superior to that 
of any other woman in ancient times. Her education was ordi- 
narily inferior to that of her brother, but she was free from Roman 
the restraints of the Athenian woman. The Roman girl women 
usually married when she was fifteen or sixteen years old. To be 
unmarried at nineteen was to be regarded as an "old maid." 
When the bride entered the household of her husband she was 
recognized at once as its mistress. She was given the keys to 
the storerooms and took charge of the work of the servants. 
She had control over the early education of her children. She 
was regarded as her husband's helpmeet and friend. She mingled 
freely with the men of the family; was present at social and 
business conferences. She was free to walk the streets at her 
pleasure. She attended the games and the festivals. She 
might even engage in business and trade. She was just as bad 
and just as good as her brother or her husband; we read all 
sorts of stories about her vices, but we must remember also that 
many a Roman matron was a " combination of dignity, industry, 
and practical wisdom," quite as worthy of honor and respect as 
the women of modern times. 

We have just learned that the mother took care of the early 
education of her children. Boys and girls ahke played in the 
gardens of the great houses or out in the narrow and dirty Roman 
streets. They had dolls and hoops, tops, stilts, and marbles, education 
very much like girls and boys of modern times. Their games 
were just as noisy and boisterous; and poor bewildered nurses 
told stories of hobgoblins and demons to frighten unruly children 
just as they have done ever since. 

When the boys were seven, they were given their satchels and 
wax tablets, and started on their way to school. There were, 
however, no women teachers; all classes were taught by men. 
The girls were taught by their mothers; they learned spinning, 
weaving, sewing, and household management. Occasionally 
they might be given a literary education, but in practically all 



88 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

cases the teaching was done at home. The boys and girls thus 
educated were of the well-to-do classes. The children of the 
lower classes received practically no education, or at most were 
taught only to read and write. 

In all schools the first lessons were devoted to reading and 
writing and simple arithmetic. Later on boys might go further 
and learn Greek poetry and philosophy and science. They 
might be trained in what the Romans called rhetoric, which corre- 
sponded to the English courses in our high schools to-day. A few 
boys who were specially ambitious might even continue their 
education under college professors in Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, 
or Massilia (modern Marseilles). These were, of course, only 
the sons of nobles or rich merchants. The other boys had gone 
to work. Finally, as a climax to his education, the Roman boy* 
when he was sixteen or eighteen years old might make a jour- 
ney through the empire under the guidance of a tutor, very 
much as the boy now who finishes college makes a trip to 
Europe before he settles down to work. 

The Romans, like the Athenians, were extremely fond of festi- 
vals. Those who know about the life of modern Italy realize 
Festivals that the people have not outgrown this fondness even in 
and games modern times. In ancient Rome over one hundred days in 
the year were devoted to feasting and merrymaking. In the 
beginning, these festivals were religious celebrations in honor of 
events in the farmer's calendar — plowing, sowing, and reaping. 
Think of the origin of our own May Day Hallowe'en, and Thanks- 
giving, and you will understand how the Roman holidays came 
about. But the original character of these festivals had been 
forgotten. They were now merely occasions for riotous fun 
and elaborate free shows. 

These free shows were undoubtedly the worst feature of Roman 
civihzation. Nothing in modern times can give any idea of what 
they were like. The vulgar exhibitions presented in the Roman 
theater, the wild excitement of the chariot races in the circus, and 
the brutal shows in the arena were in vivid contrast with the 
religious festivals in Athens, and the wonderful tragedies and 



ROMAN THEATERS 89 

comedies that were produced there for the amusement of the 
people. In their amusements, the Romans as a people were 
vulgar and coarse and brutal, while the Greeks were exceedingly 
refined. 

The Roman theaters were much more elaborate in construction 
than those in Athens. They were great open semicircular struc- 
tures, the largest of which accommodated 30,000 or 40,000 Roman 
people, with the stage at the flattened end. The best plays theaters 
were poor adaptations of Greek tragedies and comedies, but the 
people were frequently bored by them, and hissed and hooted at 
the actors or pelted them with all sorts of missiles when the acting 
was not to their taste. As a matter of fact, farces, pantomimes, 
and vaudeville shows were much more popular than the legitimate 
drama and were much more frequently staged. 

The chief amusement of the Romans was the chariot races in 
the circus. The Circus Maximus stood in the hollow between 
the Palatine and Aventine hills. This great open structure, chariot 
not unlike the Harvard Stadium in construction, had seats '^^^^^ 
for 250,000 or 300,000 spectators. For days and weeks be- 
fore the great races all Rome was in a fever of excitement. 
Hardly anything else was discussed. Men, women, and children 
would bet on their favorite colors; the nan;ies of the horses 
and their drivers were as well known to them as the names of 
popular baseball teams are in our country to-day. 

Long before sunrise, on the day of the races, thousands of 
people from all parts of the city and even from the country 
streamed intp the gates of the circus and scrambled for the best 
seats. The lower tiers were reserved for the nobles and wealthy 
merchants; the boxes for the emperor and his family. Early in 
the morning, at a signal from the master of ceremonies, the 
chariots dashed out from their enclosures and the great race of 
the day began. Seven times around the course the horses gal- 
loped. Frequently horses and drivers were killed at the turn, 
but the people were mad with excitement and merely cursed their 
ill luck. Finally the race was over; blue or green or red or white 
had gained a victory; hundreds of thousands of sesterces (a 



90 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

Roman coin equal to four or five cents) had changed hands. 
Twenty-four times in the day the scene was repeated; nothing in 
the world's history has ever equalled the excitement of one of 
these days. 

The moral effect of the shows in the arena was even worse than 
that of the chariot races in the circus. Half a dozen times a year, 
Gladiatorial sometimes oftener, the people of the city were invited to 
shows attend the gladiatorial shows in the Colosseum, the great 

amphitheater south of the Forum, which seated 80,000 or 90,000 
people. These shows were provided l3y the emperor, or by one 
of the rich nobles, for the amusement of the crowd. Lions, 
tigers, elephants, and other wild animals were turned loose in the 
arena to fight against each other or to battle with men. Fre- 
quently gladiators, slaves trained for the purpose, fought against 
each other. Death was often the result. The sight of blood 
maddened the people. Scores of men and beasts were regularly 
sacrificed to satisfy this unhealthy craving. The result on the 
character of the people can easily be imagined. 

But these, after all, are the least important characteristics of 
the Romans as far as our interest in their history is concerned. 
Peace within In spite of their personal vices, they were great soldiers, 
the empire -^yjgg lawmakers, and wonderful managers of men. In the 
time of the emperor Augustus, peace and prosperity came to the 
entire ancient world. "Every man can go where he will," says 
an old Roman writer, "the harbors are full of ships, the moun- 
tains are as safe for travelers as the town. The land has put off 
its old armor of iron and has put on festal garments of peace." 
In the center of Rome there was a little building known as the 
Temple of Janus. According to the law of the city, the doors of 
this temple always stood open as long as Rome was at war. Only 
twice before the time of Augustus had the doors been closed. 
Now the temple was closed for years and years at a time. Says 
the Roman writer, "Each day the world grows better and more 
wealthy. The roads are open to commerce; the deserts are 
changed into fruitful places; forests give way to tilled acres. 
Everywhere are houses, people, cities; everywhere there is life," 



TRADE AND COMMERCE 



91 



• Trade and commerce grew rapidly; the seas were crowded with 
ships bound on long voyages; the roads were crowded with people 
going on peaceful journeys. Traders sailed beyond Gibral- Trade and 
tar, where they fancied they could "hear the sun hiss as he commerce 
sinks into the western waves'." They journeyed to Spain, Gaul, 
Britain, and Ireland in search of raw materials — cattle, leather, 
grain, metals, and amber. From Antioch in Syria and Alexandria 
in Egypt, they brought gorgeous woven fabrics of woolen, linen, 
and silk. Spices and drugs came from Arabia; from India and the 
mountains of Asia, gold, silver, and all kinds of precious stones. 
Great as was this commerce by water, the traffic by land 
exceeded it many times. The construction of Roman roads 
was perhaps the most notable achievement of antiquity. Roman 
They were originally built for military purposes, but in the ^°^^^ ' 
days of Rome's greatest prosperity they were used mainly for 
trade. The chief road, the Appian Way, ran southeast through 
Italy. Another led to the shore opposite Sicily, and in that 
island there were roads in all directions. Still another skirted 
the northern coast of Africa. There were roads in Gaul, Spain, 
and Britain and in every province in the east. The journey 
from Antioch to Byzantium on the Bosporus (almost 700 miles), 
for instance, could be made in less than six days. 

The Roman road was regularly the shortest distance between 
two cities. It took its way regardless of all obstacles. It cut 
through hills and mountains; it crossed swamps and rivers and 
waste places. It was constructed to last through the centuries; 
some of these roads are still in use after nineteen hundred years. 
Many of these roads presented lively pictures. Here you 
found, according to a modern historian, "a merchant with his 
slaves and his bales; a keen-eyed pedler — probably a Jew — 
carrying his pack; a troupe of actors or tumblers; a body of 
gladiators being taken to fight in the amphitheater or market 
place of some provincial town; a regiment of foot soldiers or a 
squadron of cavalry on the move; a horseman scouring along 
with a despatch of the emperor or the senate; a casual traveler 
coming at a lively trot in his hired gig=" From the foothills on 




92 



PROVINCIAL CITIES 93 

the southern border of Scotland to the highlands beyond the 
Tigris River, all the lands of the Roman empire were bound to- 
gether by these great arteries of trade. 

In every city of the empire the life of Rome was reproduced in 
miniature. Rome had its 1,500,000 or 2,000,000 inhabitants; 
Alexandria and Antioch had 500,000; Marseilles and Lyons, Provincial 
200,000 or more. Even cities in Britain like London and cities 
Lincoln were very considerable in size. In every one of these 
cities there were baths, theaters, amphitheaters, aqueducts, and 
bridges which rivaled in their architectural beauty the great 
examples which we have studied in Rome. Every department of 
art from the veriest knickknacks, finger rings, earrings, hairpins, 
and mirrors, to great masterpieces, like temples and arches and 
statues, were represented. Many of the houses and gardens were 
magnificent; they were filled with costly furniture and all sorts 
of household utensils just like the houses in Rome. 

All over the empire one language was spoken by Roman soldiers 
and officials very much as English is used all over the British em- 
pire to-day. Even the common people in Italy, Gaul, Spain, -^^^jj^ ^j^^ 
Africa, and the provinces along the Danube had discarded one lan- 
their native dialects almost entirely and learned to use Latin ^^^^^ 
instead. East of the Adriatic, Greek still continued to be spoken, 
but in all the rest of the empire Latin was the common tongue. 
As a result five of the great modern languages, Italian, French, 
Spanish, Portuguese, and Roumanian, are directly derived from 
the Latin, and all the other languages of Europe are full of Latin 
words. 

Latin hterature is far less interesting than Greek. The Romans 
were not naturally gifted as writers. They created very little. 
They had no great dramatists or philosophers. Every- Latin 
thing that was best in their writing was copied from the literature 
Greek. And yet the names of the principal Latin authors like 
Cassar, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and Horace are far better known than 
those of the great Greek writers because, for centuries, Roman 
literature has served as a model of what good writing should be. 
As a proof of this statement, you need only remember that 



94 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

thousands of young men and young women in high school and 
college are still reading Latin books. 

The Romans also contributed to modern civilization the Roman 
law. In the beginning, the people of the city were ruled by 

custom. By common consent there was a well-established 
Roman law r ■, • i i,- i i • i 

system oi buymg and sellmg, and rules governmg the con- 
duct of individuals in their relations to one another. In 450 B.C., 
these customs were gathered together and embodied in a written 
code similar to the Code of Hammurabi (see page 12). Thence- 
forth the actions of the people were controlled by the Law of the 
Twelve Tables, as this code of laws was called. But this early 
law was extremely formal; it was designed to fit only the con- 
ditions which existed in and about the city of Rome. When lands 
in remote parts of Italy were added to the Roman dominions, 
especially when the legions conquered territory outside the penin- 
sula, Roman judges were frequently called upon to decide cases 
involving altogether new conditions. Therefore, the judges 
gradually developed an entirely new system of judicial procedure 
based largely upon the rules of common sense. One judge fol- 
lowed the rules of another and added something of his own to fit 
new conditions, until, in the end, a great body of laws was de- 
veloped which was used all over the empire. From time to time 
this law was codified. Then it was studied by law students and 
judges just as our law is studied to-day. This law was so nearly 
perfect that it fitted all sorts of cases. Long after the Roman 
empire ceased to exist, people all over Europe still referred to the 
Roman codes and decisions. Even to-day, in every country in. 
western Europe except England, the old Roman law is the basis 
of the law of the land. 

The great Roman empire, as we shall see in the next chapter, 

was gradually disrupted, but the fact remains that Roman in- 

Rome's stitutions and ideals are still an active influence in our 

tions"to"" everyday life. The Romans, as we have seen, were the first 

civilization people to unite all the countries of southern and western 

Europe. They built roads which stretched from one end of the 

continent to the other. They brought peace and civilization to 



TOPICS AND REFERENCES 95 

Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Italy. They opened trade with the 
various peoples. They developed a system of law and govern- 
ment which has been a model for fifteen hundred years or more. 
Their language is the basis of five of the great modern languages; 
their literature is still read and used as a model by scholars 
and writers all over the world. Their buildings were most elabo- 
rately and most carefully constructed. They discovered the 
possibility of using rounded arches, domes, and vaults in build- 
ing. They erected great amphitheaters, aqueducts, sewers, and 
bridges, many of which are still standing as monuments to their 
skill. All in all, they were the most practical, the most pains- 
taking, of the ancient nations. 

TOPICS AND REFERENCES 

Suggestive Topics. — (i) Compare the location of Rome with that of 
Athens. Which city was more advantageously located? (2) It took Rome 
about 225 years to conquer Italy and about the same time to conquer the rest 
of the Mediterranean world. How do you account for the rapidity of the 
later conquests? (3) What difference was there between the colonies estab- 
lished by Rome and those established by the Greeks? (4) In the time of the 
Roman republic, what advantages did the people in Italy have over those 
in the provinces? (5) Why was the government under the emperors better 
than that under the republic? (6) Compare the business section of Rome 
with that of Athens. (7) Which city had the better schools, Rome or Athens? 
(8) Compare the Roman festivals with those of the Greeks. {9) How do you 
account for the spread of the Latin language? (10) Why are the Roman 
roads sometimes called the greatest contribution of ancient civilization? 

Search Topics. — (i) The Legendary History of Rome. Seignobos, 
History of Roman People (Fairley), pp. 15-21; Botsford, Story of Rome as 
Greeks and Romans Tell It, pp. 29-57. — (2) The Punic Wars and their 
Effect on Roman History. Botsford, Story of Rome as Greeks and Romans 
Tell It, pp. 104-112, 1 15-122. — (3) The Roman Forum in the Time of 
Nero. Tucker, Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul, pp. 102-1 10. — 
(4) The Life of the Common People in Rome. Johnston, Private Life of 
the Romans, pp. 305-307; Davis, Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, pp. 
194-247. — (5) Roman Festivals and Games. Tucker, Life m the Roman 
World of Nero and St. Paul, pp. 260-288 ; Johnston, Private Life of the Romans, 
pp. 227-251; Davis, Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, pp. 263-268. — 
(6) Roman Trade and Commerce. Johnston, Private Life of the^ Romans, 
pp. 307-308, Davis, Influence of Wealth m Imperial Rome, pp. 1 15-122. — 



96 ROMAN CIVILIZATION 

(7) A Roman Emperor of the First Century After Christ. Ferrero, 
Characters and Events of Roman History, pp. 103-141; Botsford, Story of 
Rome as the Creeks and Romans Tell It, pp. 267-270. — (8) A Roman House. 
Preston «& Dodge, Private Life of Romans, Chapter II. — (9) Manners and 
Customs in the Provinces. Tucker, Life in the Roman World of Nero and 
St. Paul, pp. 31-48. — (10) Traffic on the Roman Roads. Tucker, Life 
in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul, pp. 16-29; Davis, The Influence of 
Wealth in Imperial Rome, pp. 95-105. 

General Reading. — Charles Seignobos, History of the Roman People, 
edited by William Fairley, Holt, 1902. Charles Seignobos, History of Ancient 
Civilization, Scribnet", 1906. W. H. Preston and L. Dodge, Private Life of the 
Romans, Sanborn, 1894. H. W. Johnston, TJie Private Life of the Romans, 
Scott,' Foresman, 1903. T. G. Tucker, Life in the Roman World of Nero and 
St. Paul, Macmillan, 1910. W. S. Davis, The Influence of Wealth in Imperial 
Rome, Macmillan, 1910. Guglielmo Ferrero, Characters and Events of Roman 
History, Putnams, 1909. W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History, Vol. II, 
Allyn & Bacon, 1913. G. W. Botsford and L. S. Botsford, The Story of Rome 
as Greeks and Romans Tell It, Macmillan, 1913. D. C. Munro, Source Book 
of Roman History, Heath, 1904. 



CHAPTER V 
THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

The conditions which were described in the last chapter belong 
to the period about one hundred and fifty years after the found- 
ing of the Roman empire by Augustus. At that time peace weaknesses 
and prosperity had continued for at least three or four in the 
generations, and it is well to remember, as we begin to ^^P'""® 
study the downfall of the Roman dominion, that they were to 
continue for another one hundred or one hundred and fifty years. 
Indeed, until the very year in which the barbarians stormed the 
gates of the capital (410 a.d.), the people in Italy and the prov- 
inces looked upon Rome as the " Eternal City," destined to be the 
center of the world for time without end. 

And yet, even in the time of Rome's greatest prosperity, there 
were elements of weakness within the empire which were eating 
away at its heart, sapping its vitality, and slowly, but surely, 
bringing about its decay. 

Perhaps the very worst evil within the empire was the existence 

of slavery. In every province from Egypt to Britain, most of 

the work in the fields and in the factories was done by men 

. Slavery 
and women held in bondage. The rich man counted his 

slaves by the hundreds and thousands. Even the ordinary well- 
to-do merchant or shopkeeper had one or two slaves upon whom 
he depended for all of his work. 

Of course there never was a time in all Roman history when 
there were not thousands of free farmers, mechanics, and laborers, 
and yet the condition of these freemen was growing steadily 
worse. Even in the days of the Roman republic, the small 
farmers of Italy found it difficult to compete with their rich 
neighbors who used only slave labor. The result was that 
thousands of acres were abandoned, and hundreds of families 

97 



98 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

wandered into the cities to live. Here, too, the opportunity for 
employment was limited, because the slaves did most of the work 
in the shops. Consequently, the freemen were glad to accept 
donations of food from rich candidates for office so that they 
could continue to live. After a time, what had been an occasional 
practice became a regular custom. From the time of Julius 
Caesar onward, the government of the city distributed to every 
freeman who cared to accept it a weekly portion of grain, oil, and 
wine. The number of paupers in Rome and the other cities of 
Italy grew larger and larger; the number of self-supporting 
workmen steadily decreased. 

The emperor Augustus attempted to arrest the depopulation 
of Italy, but without any success. In his day the farmers in 
the provinces were still prosperous, but gradually they, too, 
were driven out of business by the great land proprietors and 
wandered into the towns to live. A journey through the- empire 
about the year 400 a.d. would have revealed to the traveler 
thousands of untilled acres, once the seat of human habitations, 
now abandoned to the lairs of wild beasts. 

Naturally, the population of the empire became smaller. In- 
stead of larger families such as had been common among farmers, 
Decline in the number of children decreased; disease and evil living 
population conditions in the cities carried off thousands of people. 
Each year, as we shall see later in the chapter, a few barbarians 
wandered into the empire, but these immigrants by no means 
made up for the steady loss. 

The families of the nobles and rich merchants were even 
smaller than those of the common people. Roman fathers and 
Excessive mothers refused to be burdened with the care of many 
luxury children; they were altogether too fond of ease and luxury 

to be willing to sacrifice their comfort. Untold wealth was 
squandered on beautiful houses and magnificent gardens. The 
tastes of the rich grew more and more extravagant. The Roman 
lady must have her shimmering silken garments and her priceless 
jewels; she must be surrounded by countless handmaidens and 
household servants, no matter what they cost. Men vied with 



THE BURDEN OF TAXATION 99 

one another in buying horses and carriages and wonderful statues; 
their dinner .parties and their trips into the country often cost 
what amounted to thousands of dollars. And all the time less 
and less wealth was being produced. 

Meanwhile the demand for money on the part of the govern- 
ment grew constantly more urgent. In the days of the emperor 
Augustus and his immediate successors the administration The burden 
of public affairs in Italy and the provinces was carefully °^ taxation 
regulated. The old method of plundering the provinces was 
abandoned. Just enough money was collected to pay the ex- 
penses of the officials and to provide for the public improve- 
ments. We know, for example, how one of the greatest emperors, 
Trajan, watched the expenditure of every penny and insisted that 
the people should get full value for the sums that were spent. 

But there came a time when emperors and officials alike grew 
careless and extravagant. Imagine what it cost to build all the 
magnificent buildings, the aqueducts, the roads, and the bridges, 
which were constructed in all parts of the empire. Think of the 
salaries of the thousands of Roman officials, the cost of keeping 
up the army. Remember that the administration had grown 
careless, that the wealth of the empire was gradually decreasing, 
and you will understand why the burden of taxation was so great. 

When merchants and land owners were prosperous, the taxes did 
not seem oppressive. While the provinces were producing abun- 
dant raw materials and a surplus of manufactured articles, there 
was always enough to meet the needs of the government. But 
when the farms were abandoned and the mines were exhausted, 
when the factories were closed and trade by land and sea was con- 
tracted, men had difficulty in finding extra funds to pay the sums 
demanded. Even the richest citizens did their best to escape tax- 
ation, and the income of the government decreased every year. 

With smaller amounts of money at their disposal, the Roman 
officials gradually lost their hold on the provinces. Not that 
any of the subject peoples ever thought of revolting, but the con- 
trol of the emperors was less complete than it had been in the best 
days of the Roman government, and the empire began to decay. 

W. Anc. Civ. — 7 



lOO. TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

As early as 284 a.d., the emperor Diocletian recognized this 
condition. He realized that it was practically impossible to 
Division of supervise the affairs of the entire empire, and consequently 
the empire ]^g divided his dominions into two parts. He himself took 
charge of the provinces which extended from the Adriatic to the 
Tigris River; the western part of the empire he assigned to a 
colleague, named Maximian. 

Thenceforth, the division of the empire tended to become 
permanent. A hundred years later, there was no longer a single 
empire. In 324 a.d., a new capital was established at Con- 
stantinople, and thereafter many .of the emperors preferred this 
city to the ancient capital at Rome. Indeed, long after the 
western part of the empire had fallen, Roman traditions con- 
tinued to survive in the east. 

But we have as yet learned practically nothing of the two 
prime factors which led directly to the transition from ancient to 
modern civilization. 

About the time when the Roman government passed into the 
hands of Augustus, there arose among the people of Judea a 
Beginnines g^'sat Teacher and Preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, whom many 
of Chris- of the Jews proclaimed as the Messiah, or Christ, for whom 
tianity ^-j^q j-ace had long been waiting. Soon after His death, 

His disciples, under the leadership of Peter, gathered at Jeru- 
salem and set to work spreading the gospel of redemption 
through Christ. 

To the Romans, at first, the message of the disciples of Christ 
meant nothing. Before all, Christ had commanded love. "Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy 
soul and with all thy might. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." For centuries, the Roman had thought only of himself 
and his family. Pride and riches and power alone made a man 
noble; yet here was a prophet who said to the people, "Go, sell 
all ye have and give to the poor." "Blessed are the poor, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

To the lowly and the downtrodden in the empire, this 
new doctrine came as a message of hope. Christianity spread 



THE PERSECUTIONS lOI 

with wonderful rapidity. iVt the close of the first century after 
the birth of Christ there were Christians everywhere along the 
shores of the Mediterranean. By 150 a.d., there were congre- 
gations as far east as Arabia, Persia, and India, and as far north 
as Britain. In another hundred years, the Christians were able 
to say, "We are but of yesterday, yet we have filled all your 
places of resort — your cities, islands, fortresses, towns, and mar- 
kets, even the camps of your armies. We have left you only the 
temples of gods." In another hundred years, by the year 350 a.d., 
thousands of men and women, rich and poor, high and low, soldiers 
and merchants, nobles and slaves, had adopted the new religion. 

But the triumph of Christianity was not an easy victory. At 
first, the Romans paid but little attention to the Christians. 
They were accustomed to all sorts of strange rehgious The perse- 
practices in the empire and allowed all forms of worship cutions 
which did not interfere with the proper running of the govern- 
ment. Very soon, however, the Christians became unpopular. 
They took no part in the great Roman festivals. They de- 
nounced the cruelty and selfishness of the people. They de- 
clared that a slave was as good as his master. They offered no 
sacrifices to any visible god. Consequently, they were called 
"atheists" and "haters of mankind," and were blamed for all 
sorts of misfortunes — fires, plagues, and disasters — which 
visited the people from time to time. 

Thus there began a series of persecutions which lasted for 
nearly two hundred and fifty years. In all that time, in spite of 
their growing numbers, no Christians were entirely safe in the 
Roman empire. Wherever they lived they were outcasts from so- 
ciety. Hundreds of them were cast into prisons ; scores were thrown 
to the lions in the arena; others were crucified or burned alive. 

But in spite of all persecutions, more and more people were 
converted. Christians were to be found everywhere and in all 
walks of life. They were in the army as leaders of soldiers; Triumph of 
they were in the palaces of the emperors as ministers of Christianity 
the emperor himself. 

At last the government had to acknowledge that persecution 



I02 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

would do no good. In 313 a.d., the emperor Constantine issued 

the declaration: "No man shall be denied the right to attach 

himself to the rites of Christianity. All exceptions regarding 

Christianity shall be removed. Every Christian may freely 

and without molestation pursue and follow that course of worship 

which to him seems best." Later on, Constantine recognized 

Christianity as the ofificial religion of the Roman empire, and 

gradually paganism disappeared from the western world. 

You remember how the Roman armies entered the land which 

we now call Germany in the early part of the first century; how 

Life among ^^^^ were driven back by the Germans and never again 

the succeeded in getting a foothold beyond the Rhine (see 

Germans \ 

page 70). 

It was these Germans who, in the end, conquered the western 
part of the Roman empire. In the language of one of Rome's 
great historians, Tacitus: " They have stern, blue eyes and ruddy 
hair; their bodies are large and robust. They are not fond of 
heavy toil or labor; thirst and heat easily overcome them; but 
from the nature of their soil and climate they are proof against 
cold and hunger." They lived in the marshes on the border of 
the North Sea and in the dense unbroken forests inland. They 
devoted their lives to hunting and fishing, and to war. Of 
agriculture they knew little or nothing; what little wealth they 
had was represented by herds of half-wild cattle. Their houses 
were nothing but rude huts; their clothing was made of the skins 
of animals or coarsely woven cloths. There were no great 
cities in Germany, and commerce was almost unknown. 

The Germans were intensely fond of fighting. "To earn by 
the sweat of your brow what you may gain by the price of your 
blood," says Tacitus, "was unworthy of a soldier." "Yet this 
brave warrior, who in the field braves every danger, becomes in 
times of peace a listless sluggard. The management of his house 
and land he leaves to his women, to the old men, and to the infirm 
of the family; he himself lounges in stupid repose." 

When not engaged in fighting or hunting, the German de- 
voted himself to drinking and gambling; quarrels and bloodshed 




Life in a Germanic Forest 
103 



I04 TRANSITION TO MODERN CTVTLIZATTON 

frequently resulted, and many men were willing to stake even 
their freedom on a throw of the dice. This was the worst vice 
of the Germans; their greatest virtue was the purity of their 
family life. Absolute faithfulness to the marriage tie was the 
pride of every household. Besides, they were great lovers of 
liberty and every man respected his neighbor's rights. 

The ancient German religion was similar to that of the early 

Greek which is described in the poems of Homer (see page 36). 

Their reli- Their chief god, as might be expected, was the great warrior, 

gion and Wotan, the father of gods and the ancestor of the chief 

government j^gj-^gg ^f ^^^ ^^^j^^j^ Next to him in importance was Thor, 

the god of storms and of thunder, who often hurled his great 
hammer from heaven in anger and caused the earth to tremble at 
his wrath. All the gods dwelt together in a great heavenly 
castle surrounded by the spirits of warriors who had died in battle. . 
Here there was great feasting and merrymaking and frequent 
quarrels similar to those of the Greek gods. 

The government of the Germans was very simple. Some of 
the tribes elected so-called kings, but most of them were led by 
chiefs who held their position because they were brave leaders in 
war. Every important matter was decided in assemblies in 
which all the fighting men of the tribe took part. When the 
warriors were in favor of anything they clashed their weapons 
against their shields as a signal of their vote. In war they 
fought together in companies of men who belonged to the same 
family. 

In the years when the empire was declining, the barbarians 

were growing steadily in civilization. One tribe united with 

,j.jjg another; their numbers increased rapidly; they felt more 

Germanic and more the need for new lands where they could hunt and 

invasions ^^-^ ^^^ cultivate the soil. 

Bit by bit, they encroached on the lands of their more civilized 
neighbors. At first, they came in small numbers and filled up 
the vacant fields left unoccupied by the people of the empire. 
They even enlisted in the Roman armies and fought against their 
kinsmen who kept pressing in from behind. By the year 350 a.d., 



BREAKING THE FRONTIER 105 

perhaps a majority of the soldiers in the northern provinces were 
Germans. By that year, too, the Roman province north of the 
Danube, called Dacia, was completely settled by a race of 
Germans called the Goths. 

Everything might still have gone well with the empire as far 
as these barbarians were concerned. They might have con- 
tinued to drift in little by little as they accepted Roman civiliza- 
tion. They might have been absorbed into the older population 
without serious disturbance but for one thing. About 350 
A.D., a new and terrible people from the north, the Huns, began 
to cross the border between Asia and Europe, driving the 
Germans before them. 

The Huns were a yellow-skinned people looking not unlike 
the modern Chinese. They lived almost entirely on horseback, 
scarcely descending, we are told, even to sleep. Of agriculture, 
even of the herding of flocks, they knew practically nothing; 
they spent their days wandering from place to place, seeking 
plunder and destroying the works of other men's hands. No 
army could check them; no soldiers could stand against them. 
To the Germans and Romans alike their leader Attila was known 
as the "Scourge of God." 

In 375 A.D., the dreaded Huns were already pressing into Dacia. 
In fright and terror, the western tribes of the Goths — Visigoths 
as they were called — crowded the banks of the Danube Breaking 
and begged the Roman emperor to allow them to cross the *^® frontier 
river and place its broad waters between them and their terrible 
foes. 

At first the emperor hesitated; then he granted the petition 
of the Visigoths, and some two hundred thousand warriors and 
their families crossed the river in boats. Unfortunately for the 
empire, the Visigoths were ill-treated by the Roman officials. 
They were robbed of all their treasures; their women and children 
were insulted; even starvation threatened; and so the warriors 
resorted to arms. 

In 378 A.D., the Visigoths and the Romans met in battle at 
a place not far from Constantinople called Adrianople. The 



lo6 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

struggle was short and decisive. The Roman army was defeated; 
the emperor himself was mortally wounded. The Visigoths for 
the first time tasted the joy of victory; the " Death of Rome," 
as a great English historian has called it, had begun. 

In 395 A.D., the Visigoths chose as their leader a young man 

named Alaric, to whom war was almost as necessary as the air 

Alaric, the he breathed. He hated the thought that his people were 

Visigoth called subjects of the emperor. They had conquered 

the Romans at Adrianople; why should they not conquer 

again? 

Forthwith Alaric resolved on battle. First he moved south into 
Greece, where he captured and plundered Athens. But he was 
compelled to withdraw before his conquest was complete. Almost 
every year thereafter the Visigoths shifted their position in the 
empire; once they penetrated even into Italy; but they never 
succeeded in entirely overcoming the Roman armies until the 
year 410 a.d. 

All this time Alaric was restless. A voice, it is said, had come 
to him, saying, "Strive till you reach the city," and he was con- 
vinced that the "city" must be the capital of the empire itself. 

In 410 A.D., his destiny was accomplished. The city of Rome 
was captured. For the first time in 800 years, foreign soldiers 
were marched into the Forum and encamped in the streets of 
Rome. Imagine the feeling all over the empire when the news 
spread that the barbarians had taken the city which for so many 
hundred years had been the center of the world! 

For three days and nights Alaric gave up the city to plunder. 
Then he gathered his forces together and started for southern 
Italy. Perhaps he intended to cross into Sicily and Africa; but 
whatever his plans, they were never carried out. Before he 
finished his preparations, while still a young man, ready to lead 
his people on to still more glorious deeds, he died. With heavy 
hearts, his followers buried him in a swift-running stream which 
makes its way down from the Apennines. Alaric had seen the 
rich lands of Italy, he had opened them to his followers, but he 
himself was not to live there. 



VISIGOTHIC KINGDOM IN SPAIN 107 

After the death of Alaric, Italy seems to have lost its attraction 
for the Visigoths. Perhaps they were filled with some unnamed 
superstition. At all events, they turned their backs upon visigothic 
the peninsula and continued their journey westward into kingdom in 
southern Gaul and Spain. Here they founded a Visigothic ^^^" 
kingdom, the first independent German dominion created on 
Roman soil. 

From this time on, attacks on the Roman empire were fre- 
quent. One group of barbarians after another poured into the 
Roman dominions; one western province after another was p^u ^^ ^^^ 
conquered, till, by the year 450 a.d., seventy five years western 
after the Visigoths crossed the Danube, only Italy and ^^^"^ 
Gaul could still be reckoned as parts of the empire. Nothing 
was left of the ancient glory of the "Eternal City." Even the 
emperor of the West was nothing but a weakling, subject to the 
will of his German soldiers, commanded by German chiefs. In 
476 A.D., 1230 years after the traditional founding of the city, 
the last Roman emperor in the west was deposed. In the course 
of this chapter you will read about later Roman emperors, but it 
must be remembered that these were rulers in Constantinople, 
not emperors who governed from Rome. Indeed, the Roman 
tradition persisted in the eastern part of the ancient Roman 
dominion almost till the time of the discovery of America; 
exactly, until the year 1453. 

The name of the German leader who established himself as 
ruler of Italy in 476 a.d. is not important. He did his best to 
bring peace to the peninsula, but his efforts were all in vain, xheodoric 
In 493 A.D., he was conquered by another German chieftain, the 
Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogothic (East Gothic) people, ^ ^°^° 
who came into Italy as a representative of the emperor of the 
East. 

Under Theodoric, Italy enjoyed a brief period of peace. The 
roads in the peninsula and the streets of the cities were once more 
comparatively safe for merchants. Farmers were encouraged 
to return to their fields. Even the schools were once more opened 
and every one breathed a sigh of relief. 



io8 



TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 



. But the peace which Theodoric brought to Italy was only a 

pause in the storm. One year after he died, a new emperor, 

T fn" n— ^^^^^ Justinian, ascended the throne at Constantinople 

lawgiver and (527 A.D.). Justinian was a man of exceptional ability. 

conqueror jj-^ name is chiefly remembered because, under his direction, 

the old laws of the empire were gathered together and organized 

into a code. This code is still the basis of the laws which govern 




the personal relations of practically all the people on the continent 
of Europe. Justinian was also the last emperor who succeeded 
in uniting the empire under his personal rule. First he reor- 
ganized his army, then he sent his soldiers into Africa and into 
Italy with the intention of driving out the German conquerors 
who had settled there. The Ostrogoths offered strenuous resist- 



THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY 109 

ance. One city after another was attacked and plundered. 
Rome, which by this time had become accustomed to foreign 
invaders, suffered serious damage. Hundreds of ancient buildings 
and monuments were ruined. All the horrors of war were once 
more repeated and all the good things accomplished by Theodoric 
were altogether undone. 

In the end, the Ostrogoths were driven out of Italy (533 a.d.). 
For a few years, while Justinian lived, the peninsula was governed 
by officials sent from Constantinople. But in 568 a.d., j,^^ 
still another race of Germans, the Lombards, began to Lombards 
pour into Italy from the north. First they conquered the ^° * ^ 
lands in the Po valley. Later on they spread farther and farther 
south till they occupied nearly all the peninsula except Rome and 
a few cities far to the south. 

The Lombards have been called the anarchists of the German 
invasion. They had no such ideals as those of Theodoric. They 
destroyed thousands of the books and treasures which the Romans 
had gathered in the course of the centuries. They were cruel 
and heartless in their dealings with the people. Their coming 
inaugurated the "Dark Ages" in Italy. Their name has always 
remained a curse in the land. 

While Italy and the provinces on the borders of the Mediter- 
ranean were being plundered by one Germanic people after an- 
other, the provinces of Gaul and of Britain were also being Roman 
overrun by barbarians who came from the east. Britain 

Because thousands of Germans were wandering over the con- 
tinent of Europe, soon after the year 400 a.d. the Romans were 
forced to call their soldiers home from the island of Britain, 

The Romans had been masters of the southern part of Britain 
for over three hundred years. They had conquered the island as 
far north as the borders of Scotland. They had built themselves 
noble houses and gardens; they had filled them with statuary and 
other beautiful works of art. There were baths and temples and 
aqueducts in a dozen or more cities. Roads crossed the island 
in several directions: one running northwest from London to 
Chester, another northward to the city of York. Along the roads 



no TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

were beautiful country houses. Agriculture was thriving, and 
peace and prosperity reigned. 

To the north and west, however, were savage tribes who con- 
stantly threatened invasion. A great wall had been built across 
the island to keep these barbarians in check. No sooner were the 
Roman soldiers withdrawn than these barbarians began to attack 
the Britons. Pitiful supplications for assistance were sent across 
the Channel. "The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws 
us back on the barbarians. Thus two modes of death await us; 
we are either slain or drowned." 

The Romans could no longer assist them. The fields of the 
husbandmen were ravaged; the cities were burned and plundered; 
aqueducts and baths and other beautiful buildings were de- 
stroyed. "Then all the councilors were so blinded," an old 
chronicler tells us, "that they sealed the doom of their country 
by inviting in among them, like wolves into the sheepfold, the 
fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God and men." 
These Saxons were German sea rovers who lived in northern 
Germany just beyond the river Elbe. They, and their kinsmen. 
The Anglo- ^^^ Angles and Jutes, who lived in the peninsula of Den- 
Saxon in- mark, gladly accepted the invitation of the Britons. They 
vasions landed first on the eastern side of the island of Britain in the 

year 449 a.d. Later, more and more of them crossed the sea in 
their ships. The northern barbarians of Britain were checked in 
their conquests, but the German barbarians occupied the land 
instead. 

Nearly all the evidences of Roman civilization in Britain were 
destroyed by the Germans. Whole cities were wiped out and 
practically forgotten. Fields and meadows once devoted to agri- 
culture and cattle raising were neglected. The Roman language 
and law and Uterature disappeared. Apparently, civilization in 
Britain was set back three or four hundred years. One thing, 
however, the Germans brought with them which was of the 
greatest value to future generations; that was the idea of liberty 
and equahty and the right of the individual to take part in the 
government, Out of this has grown many of the institutions 



THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND ill 

which are the cornerstone of EngHsh and American liberty 
to-day. 

The conquest of Britain proceeded slowly. The island was 
not occupied all at once. The Jutes and Angles and Saxons 
probably crossed the sea in bands of two or three hundred, bring- 
ing their wives and children. They settled at first in small towns 
or villages along the east and south coasts. Gradually they made 
their way inland and took possession of the center of the island, 
biit they never succeeded in conquering the land in the northern 
and western parts. Scotland and Wales and Cornwall were still 
inhabited by Britons two or three hundred years after the con- 
quest began. 

At first each band of invaders was independent of all the others. 
Each Httle village probably made its laws without much regard 
for its neighbors; there was no central government such as ^j^^ begin- 
the island had known under the Romans. But a hundred nings of 
years, more or less, after the beginning of the conquest, ^ 
the various villages had been united into seven or more Httle 
kingdoms — Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent, East Anglia, North- 
umbria, and Mercia — and a struggle for supremacy among these 
various kingdoms began.- 

The story of this struggle may be re^d in one of the histories 
of England. It lasted about two hundred and fifty years. When 
the struggle was over, Egbert, the king of Wessex, was recognized 
as overlord of all the Germanic peoples in the island (827 a.d.). 
Angles and Saxons and Jutes were finally united. The name 
Anglo-Saxon was appHed to all the conquerors alike. The name 
Angle-land (England) was adopted as the title of the new king- 
dom, and the real history of modern England began. 

Northern Gaul was the last part of the western Roman empire 
to fall into the hands of the Germans. Just about the time that 
the Anglo-Saxons were crossing into Britain, another race j^^ Franks 
of German barbarians, the Franks, were establishing them- in northern 
selves along the banks of the Rhine from where the city of 
Cologne now stands to its mouth. The Franks differed from all 
the other Germanic peoples we have heard of thus far. Instead 



112 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

of wandering from place to place in the empire seeking for plunder, 
they never abandoned their homes on the banks of the Rhine. 
They slowly extended their power in all directions, conquering 
their neighbors and incorporating them into their empire very 
much as the Romans had done seven hundred and fifty years 
before. 

In very early times, the Franks were divided into a number of 
small tribes loosely united into two federations: the Salian and 
the Ripuarian Franks. About 480 a.d., Clovis, who traced his 
ancestry back to a mythical hero, Merovius, was elected chief 
by one of the Salian tribes. A few years later he was hailed as 
king by all of the Salians. Then his ambition led him, in 486 a.d., 
to enter northern Gaul, where the Romans still remained in con- 
trol. At Soissons, on a tributary of the Seine, he met and totally 
defeated the Roman army. By that one battle, Clovis added to 
his dominions all of Gaul north of the river Loire. Twenty-five 
years longer he ruled over the Franks. In that time he conquered 
the lands of the upper Rhine and most of the territory in Gaul 
between the Loire and the Pyrenees, so that on the day of his 
death he controlled an empire greater than that of any German 
prince before his time. 

Under the Franks the old Roman civilization in Gaul and the 

newer German civilization were united. The people of the 

Union of province were conquered, but they continued to live in their 

rT^L^r^ old homes under the rule of the Frankish leaders. They 
Oermanic _ 

civilization still spoke the old Latin language and transacted their 
business under Roman law. Gradually, even the conquerors 
adopted the customs and the language of the country and 
intermarried with the earUer inhabitants. The same thing 
happened in Spain and Italy, so that in the course of two or 
three hundred years the old Germanic languages were forgot- 
ten and the newer modern languages, French, Spanish, and 
Italian, which are descended from the Latin, had taken their 
place. 

After the death of Clovis, the Franks continued their conquests 
until their dominions extended almost from the River Elbe to the 



MAYORS OF THE PALACE 113 

Atlantic Ocean, from the North Sea to the Pyrenees and the 
Mediterranean. But among all the descendants of Clovis there 
was scarcely a single man worthy of the name of king. The 
Frankish people were vigorous, but the power of the king steadily 
declined. In the end, as an old chronicler says, "There was 
nothing left for the king to do but to be content with his flowing 
hair and long beard, and to sit on the throne and play the ruler." 

The real master of the Frankish kingdom was the king's chief 
minister, the mayor of the palace, as he was called. At first the 
mayor of the palace was appointed; but in the course of Mayors of 
time the office descended from father to son. The greatest *^® palace 
of all the mayors of the palace was Charles Martel (The Hammer), 
whose fame rests upon the fact that at Tours, in 732 a.d., he 
rolled back the tide of Mohammedan invasion, which in his time 
threatened to overwhelm all Europe. 

Mohammed was born in Arabia in 571 a.d. Until he was forty 
years old he did nothing to distinguish himself from his fellows. 
Then, so the story goes, he had a vision in which an angel of Moham- 
God came to him from heaven and ordered him to preach medamsm 
the belief in one God. At first he was persecuted and derided, but 
before he died he was received by all the people of Arabia as the 
chief prophet of God. Thereafter those who accepted his doc- 
trines were promised eternal bliss in heaven; those who refused 
were given over to slaughter without mercy. This is the way that 
Mohammedanism spread. 

After the death of Mohammed in 632 a.d., Mohammedanism 
spread with marvellous rapidity. No one could stand against 
the Arabian warriors; they were absolutely fearless in battle. 
Had not Mohammed promised them that those who fell in battle 
would pass straight to Paradise? In Asia they conquered Syria 
and Palestine, all of Persia, Armenia, and Turkestan, and even a 
part of India. In the west, they extended their empire to Egypt, 
TripoH, and Morocco. In 711 a.d., less than a hundred years 
after the death of Mohammed, they, crossed into Spain. Here 
they put an end to the rule of the Visigoths and estabUshed a 
kingdom which lasted nearly eight hundred years. 



114 



TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 



of Tours 



Still the tide of Mohammedan conquest rolled onward. In 
732 A.D., the armies of the prophet crossed the Pyrenees and ad- 
The Battle vanced almost to the banks of the Loire. By that time 
Charles Martel, the mayor of the palace, was ready. In a 
desperate battle, known as the battle of Tours, the Arabs were 
defeated and forced to retire south of the Pyrenees. Western 
Europe was saved to Christianity; the people' of the prophet 
were confined to the south and the east. 




Mohammedan Dominions 



In the time of Charles Martel, every country in western 

Europe acknowledged the bishop of Rome (the Pope) as the 

Growth of supreme head of the Christian Church. The church 

the Christian was the best-organized institution in Europe. It had 

developed slowly, however, over a period of five or six 

hundred years. 

In the years immediately after the death of Jesus, Christian 
worshipers probably met in each other's houses to pray together, 
to sing hyinns in praise of God, and to partake of a sacrificial 
meal in memory of the "Last Supper" mentioned in the New Tes- 
tament. This is the origin of the service which is still celebrated 
in Christian churches to-day. 

Congregations were organized, each under the direction of a 
chief priest, or bishop, as he was called. He was assisted in the 
celebration of the service by a group of elders called priests. A 



THE BISHOP OF ROME AS POPE II5 

third set of officers, the deacons, devoted themselves to the care 
of the poor. These early church officers were zealous mission- 
aries, and consequently new congregations were organized in neigh- 
boring villages and towns. Over each of these, one of the priests 
was placed in authority. He acknowledged the bishop of the 
parent church as his leader and guide. In this way, the bishop 
became head over a number of churches, and we have the begin- 
nings of the modern diocese. 

All the churches in the Roman empire were, of course, not of 
equal importance. It was natural that congregations in the large 
cities should be more highly regarded than those in smaller and 
less important towns. Hence the bishops of the churches in 
certain cities were honored above the other bishops, and were 
called archbishops. 

To the Bishop of Rome still higher recognition was given. 
By virtue of their office, the bishops of Rome held that they 
were primates over all the Christian churches in all the ^j^^ j^j^j^^ 
world. This claim was based upon the words of Christ of Rome as 
as given in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew: " Thou ^''^^ 
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Since Peter had 
founded the church at Rome and had acted as its head, 
according to the Roman claims, the bishops of Rome were 
his spiritual successors, and as such were entitled to all the 
consideration which Peter had enjoyed as the first of the 
Apostles. 

Several things had augmented the power of the Pope, as 
the bishop of Rome was called. In the days of the Germanic 
invasions, when the power of the emperors was declining, there 
was no one in the western part of the empire equal in dignity and 
authority to the bishop of Rome. The Christians of Italy and 
the provinces often turned to him for help and comfort. Sev- 
eral times he saved the people from the wrath of the barbarians; 
in a number of cases his missionaries converted entire German 
nations hke the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity; 
he frequently succeeded in settling important disputes. 



Il6 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

After the fall of the Western Empire, the church of Rome was 

undoubtedly the greatest agency in Europe for the spread of 

Orie'n and civilization. This movement was furthered especially by 

growth of the work of the monks. 

monasticism ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^-^^ Christians were being fiercely 

persecuted by the Roman emperors, thousands of believers 
took refuge in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, where they lived 
as hermits, devoting their lives to the service of God. In course 
of time, a number of these hermits came together and lived 
under a common rule. This was the beginning of monasticism. 
In the western part of the empire, especially in the vicinity of 
Rome, a few Christians who sought to escape persecution took 
refuge in underground passages called Catacombs, where they 
fled from their enemies and worshiped in secrecy. Then, too, 
during the period of the persecutions, occasional bands of religious 
enthusiasts in western Europe attempted to form societies similar 
to those founded in Eg}q3t and Syria; but it was not till 529 a.d., 
long after the persecutions were over, that the first regular 
monastery was built in the west. In that year, St. Benedict, 
with a few followers, founded a monastery at Monte Casino in 
southern Italy and adopted the Benedictine Rule. 

The Benedictine Rule was the model for all later monastic 
orders. It bound its members by a vow of poverty, chastity, 
and obedience. The monk was allowed to own no personal 
property; he was never to marry; and he was always to be ready 
to obey the orders of his abbot without question. The rule of 
St. Benedict further required that the life of the monk should be 
spent in work. "To labor is to pray," was the chief motto of 
the order. Thus the great merit of western monasticism was 
that it was human. It was organized to make the world better, 
as well as for the purpose of saving men's souls. 

For a thousand years the monks were the leaders in Europe in 
the works of humanity. They journeyed into the farthest cor- 
ners of Europe, cutting down the forests, draining the swamps, 
and opening the country to agriculture. They established 
schools and hbraries and kept alive a knowledge of Latin when 



BENEFITS OF MONASTICISM I17 

not one man in ten thousand, not even among the nobles, could 

so much as sign his own name. They devoted their Hves to 

converting the heathen ; they kept open house for Benefits of 

the traveler; they offered help and comfort to the monasticism 

weary, the sick, and the poor. In a world in which violence 

and disorder were common, they were the comforting agents 

of peace. 

The invasion of the Germans, as we have already learned, 

resulted in the destruction of the Roman empire in the west. 

In its place, by the year 750 a.d., there had grown up a Charles 

number of German kingdoms, of which that of the Franks ^^'^^^ ^'^^ 
^ _ ' his suc- 

was the greatest and most important. But the traditions cessors 
of the Roman empire were ever present in the minds of the rulers 
and the churchmen who were the leaders of the people. Men 
continued to talk and to think of the glorious days when all 
Europe was at peace. Even in the darkest days of war and 
disorder, they continued to look forward to a time when all the 
world would once more be united and good will would once more 
be established on earth. 

Charles Martel was succeeded as mayor of the palace by his 
two sons. One of these sons, named Pepin, put an end to the 
curious condition which had so long existed in the Frankish 
liingdom. In 752 a.d., he deposed the last successor of Clovis 
and himself assumed the title of king. In doing this he sought 
and received the approval of the Pope. In return, he offered his 
assistance in fighting the Lombards, who were attacking the city 
of Rome. In 756 a.d., the king of the Lombards was defeated 
by Pepin and forced to give up the cities in northern Italy which 
he had recently conquered. But Pepin had no ambition to be- 
come a ruler of lands beyond the Alps; consequently he gave 
over the government of these cities to the Pope. This was the 
beginning of the temporal power of the Roman bishops, which 
lasted till 1870 a.d. 

In 768 A.D., Pepin was succeeded by his son Charles, com- 
monly known as Charlemagne, the greatest figure we have yet 
encountered among the men of the German race. He was 

W. Anc. Civ. — 8 



Il8 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

a warrior, statesman, organizer, and king, all in one. "Great 

and powerful as was the realm of the Franks which Charles 

Charle- received from his father Pepin," says an ancient chronicler, 

of^thT' *"^ "^^ nevertheless so splendidly enlarged it by his wars, that 

Franks he almost doubled its dominions." 

"Charles was a large, robust man of commanding stature and 
excellent proportions, " the chronicler continues. " He had a fine 
head of gray hair, and his face was bright and pleasant. His 
walk was firm, and the whole carriage of his body manly. He 
took constant exercise in riding and hunting. He also delighted 
in swimming, in which he was very skillful. 

"In his eating and drinking he was temperate. The daily 
service of his table consisted of only four dishes in addition to 
the roast meat, which the hunters used to bring to the table on 
spits. While he was dining, he listened to music or reading. 

" He was ready and fluent in speaking, and able to express him- 
self with great clearness. He was an ardent admirer of learning, 
and greatly revered the scholars whom he gathered about him. 
He himself tried to learn to write, but made but little progress 
in this art. " 

Charlemagne was eager to reestablish the ancient Roman em- 
pire of the west. Like so many other great rulers among the 
Germans, he dreamed of reviving the ancient glories of Rome. 
He did his best to encourage the study of Latin literature. He 
gathered a number of learned men about him and urged the 
young men of his court to attend the schools which he founded. 
He built many churches and palaces and public buildings. But in 
spite of his earnest endeavors, the spirit of the ancient Romans 
• was dead. His buildings were pitiful examples of architecture 
compared with those of the best days of the Roman empire, 
because the people of his kingdom were not interested in art. 

During his reign he conquered the Saxons, a wild Germanic 
people of the eastern part of Germany, blood relations of the men 
who had conquered Britain three hundred years before his time. 
He carried on the war begun by his father against the Lombards 
in Italy, and finally reduced them to submission, assuming as 



CHARLEMAGNE'S CONQUEST 



119 



his own the iron crown which is said to contain a thin iron band 
fashioned out of a nail of the True Cross. He fought against 
the Mohammedans in northern Spain and drove them charie- 
south of the river Ebro. When he died he was magne's 
master of an empire which extended from eastern *^°"'i"®^ 
Germany to the Atlantic Ocean, from the North Sea to the 
Mediterranean, including part of northern Italy and part of 
northern Spain. 




\ ■•"'^■"■^'^■' "^ j -^^ /■/ y'^X''^%A^ -^^ 



1 n 7 0/8 \ 





t i o 1^ 

ME D ITERRAN EAN'^i SEA 

SCALE OF MILES 

50 100 200 300 



Charlemagne's Empire 

Charlemagne made a special effort to govern this territory 

well. He divided it into a number of units called counties, and 

placed his representatives in charge. These men were Government 

, ^, , , , . ,, of Charle- 

expected to gather the taxes, to take charge of the army, magne's 

and to see that the laws of Charlemagne were obeyed. In empire _ 

order to keep in touch with their doings, Charlemagne sent out 

messengers from time to time to look into the condition of the 



I20 TRANSITION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 

country and to report on the acts of the counts, as the rulers of 
the counties were called. All this was a feeble attempt to copy 
the system of the ancient Roman empire. It worked with some 
measure of success during the lifetime of Charlemagne, but after 
his death it fell into decay. 

The most dramatic and the most important event in the life 
of Charlemagne took place on Christmas day in the year 800 a.d. 
The Roman ^^ ^^^^ ^^J' ^^ ^ reward for the assistance which he had 
empire re- rendered in freeing Italy from the power of the Lombards, 
he was crowned emperor of Rome by the Pope. Charle- 
magne was the first man in three hundred and twenty-four years 
to be honored with that title in the ancient city. As he knelt at 
the altar to receive the crown, the crowd in the church shouted, 
''Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, the magnificent, the 
bringer of peace, who has been crowned emperor by God." "In 
that shout," says a modern writer, "echoed by the Franks with- 
out, was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty 
in its consequences, of the Roman and the German, of the memo- 
ries and the civiUzation of the south with the fresh energy of the 
north, and from that moment modern history begins. " 

On Christmas day in the year 800 a.d., men thought that at last 

the ancient Roman empire had been revived. As a matter of fact. 

The link they were entirely mistaken. The new empire lacked the 

between an- machinery by which the ancient empire had been adminis- 

cient and . 

modern tered; it lacked its unity of language and law. The old 

civihzation empire had rested on Roman ideals and Roman traditions; 
it had grown up as a result of centuries of conquest; the new em- 
pire was thoroughly German; its system of law was German, 
and its ruler had not a trace of Roman blood. Still, the new 
empire reawakened in men's minds and hearts the love and 
admiration of the glories of Roman accomplishments; it revived 
the mighty traditions of the civilization which Rome had created; 
and thus it forged the link, never since broken, between the 
ancient and the modern world. 



TOPICS AND REFERENCES 121 

TOPICS AND REFERENCES 

Suggestive Topics. — • (i) Compare the effects of slavery in the Roman 
Empire with its effects in the southern United States. (2) How do you 
account for the fact that the Eastern Empire continued to exist almost 1000 
years after the fall of Rome? (3) Enumerate as many reasons as you can 
why the Romans persecuted the Christians. (4) Was division of the Empire 
by Diocletian wise or unwise? Give your reasons. (5) Compare the life of 
the early Gdrmans with that of the Greeks in Homeric times. (6) Wh>' is the 
battle of Adrianople often referred to as the beginning of the "Death of 
Rome? " (7) Compare the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain with the Prank- 
ish conquest of Gaul. (8) Why did Mohammedanism spread so much more 
rapidly than Christianity? (9) Why was the Empire founded by Charle- 
magne, called the "Holy Roman Empire "? 

Search Topics. — • (i) Causes of the Decline of the Roman Empire. 
Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 17-19; Davis, Influence of Wealth 
in Imperial Rome, pp. 314-335. — (2) The Spread of Christianity. Davis, 
Readings in Ancient History, Vol. II, pp. 285-291; Sergeant, The Franks, pp. 
50-57. — (3) The Story of Alaric, the Visigoth. Hodgkin, Dynasty of 
Theodosius, pp. 137-168; Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 28-32. 
Ogg, Source Book of Mediceval History, pp. 54-56. — (4) The Battle of Tours. 
Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 126-129; Davis, Readings 
in Ancient History, Vol. II, pp. 362-364. — (5) The Civilizing Influence 
of the Monks. Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 138-144. — 
(6) Life Among the Early Germans. Hodgkin, Dynasty of Theodosius, 
pp. 54-72; Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 14-17; Ogg, Source 
Book of MedicBval History, pp. 19-31. (7) The Conversion of Clovis as 
Told by Gregory of Tours. Robinson, Readings in European History, 
Vol. I, pp. 52-55. — (8) The Government of Charlemagne's Empire. 
Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 219-222; Ogg, Source Book of 
Mediceval History, pp. 134-141; Davis, Readings in Ancient. History, Vo\. I, 
pp. Z11-Z19- — • (9) The Rule of St. Benedict. Ogg, Source Book of 
Mediceval History, pp. 83-90. 

General Reading. — ■ E. Emerton, An Introdtiction to the Study of The Middle 
Ages, Ginn, 1903. T. Hodgkin, The Dynasty of Theodosius, Clarendon Press, 
1889. T. Hodgkin, Theodoric The Goth, Putnam, 1891. L. Sergeant, The 
Franks, Putnam, 1898. W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History, AUyn & 
Bacon, 1913. F. A. Ogg, A Source Book of Mediceval History, American 
Book Co., 1908. J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History, Ginn, 1904. 



INDEX 



Diacritic marlcs: a as in far\ a as in task, sofa; -e.-ch, as in cask, chasm; g as in ice; 
g as in gem; g as in go; s as in news. The long and short marks used with vowels 
have their usual meaning. Single italic letters are silent. 



A'braham, 24, 25. 

Achse'ans, 37, 40. 

Aehil'les, 34. 

Acrop'olis, 45, 54, S8. 

Ac'tium (-shi-um), battle of, 77. 

Adriano'ple, battle of, 105, 106. 

^e-ge'an islands, 24, 31, 33, 43- 

^mil'ius, Basilica of, 80. 

yles'chy-lus, 54. 

Agamem'non, 39. 

Al'aric, 106. 

Alexan'der the Great, 43, 67. 

empire of, 43. 
Alexan'dria, 88, 93. 

Alps, 61, 62. 

Amphitheaters in Roman Empire, 81, 90. 

Anah'asis, work of Xenophon, 56. 

Angles, no, in. 

Anglo-Saxons and Christianity, 115. 

Anlig'o-ne, 54. 

An'tioeh, 88, 93. 

An'to-ny, 77. 

Aphrodi'te, 36, 37. 

Apol'lo, 36, 37. 

Ap'ennineg, 61, 62. 

Ap'pian Way, gi. 

Aqueducts, Roman, 83-84, 93. 

Arabia, 8, 11, 113. 

A 'res, 36. 

Ariad'ne, 31. 

Aristoph'a-nes, 53. 

Ar'istotle (ar'-), 57, 58. 

Armenia, Mohammedanism in, 113. 

Army, Roman, 74, 78. 

Arno River, 62. 

Ar'temis, 36. 

Art, in Babylonia, 21, 22. 
in Egypt, 22. 
in Greece, 58, 59. 
in Roman Empire, 81-82, 93. 



Assembly, in early Greece, 39 

in Athens, 50, 51. 

in Rome, 72-74. 

among the Germans, 104. 
Assyr'ians, 12-14, 21. 
A-the'na, 36, 59. 
A-the'nians, dress of, 47, 48. 

education, 48-50. 

homes, 46, 47. 

food, 48. 
Ath'ens, city of, 40-46. 

captured by Alaric, 106. 

climate, 45. 

commerce, 43-46. 

education, 48-50, 88. 

festivals, 52-54. 

government, 50-51. 

industries, 46. 

leader of Confederacy of Delos, 43. 

life in, 43-59- 

market place, 45-46. 

Persian wars, 42-43. 

religion, 51-54- 

war with Sparta, 43. 
Athletics in Athenian education, 50. 
A'trium, 82, 85. 

At'tila, leader of the Huns, 105. 
Augurs in Rome, 65. 
Augus'tus, 77, 81. 
Av 'en-tine hill, 64. 

Bab'ylon, 11, 27. 

Babylo'nia, architecture and art in, 21, 
22. 

classes of society, 14-16. 

commerce, 18. 

industries, 16-18. 

literature, 21. 

religion, 18, 19. 

system of writing, 13. 



123 



124 



INDEX 



"Babylonian Captivity," 25. 

Babylonians, 11-14. See Babylonia. 

Ba'shan, 23. 

Basil'ica, 80. 

Baths in Roman Empire, 86, 93. 

Benedic'tine Rule, 116. 

Ben'edicl, Saint, n6. 

Bishop, in Christian church, 114, 

115- 
Book of the Dead, 20. 
Bos'porus, 41. 

Bridges in Roman Empire, 93. 
Britain, 70, loi, no. 
Bru'tus, 77. 
By-zan'tium (-shi-um), 41, 44. 

Cae'sar, Julius, 67, 70, 77, 93. 

Calendar, adopted by Egyptians, 10. 

Cam'pus Mar'tius (-shi-us), 81. 

Cap'itoline hill, 64, 79. 

Car'thage, 24, 66, 67. 

Carthagin'ians, 66-67. 

Cassius (kash' i-us), 77. 

Cas'tor and Pol'lux, temple of, 80. 

Cat'a combs, 116. 

Catholic church, 115. 

Cave men, life of, 3, 4. 

Chariot races in Rome, 89. 

Char'le-magne (shar'-), 117-120. 

Charles Martel', 113, 114, 117. 

Christianity, 100-102. 

Church, 114-117. 

Cic'ero (sis'-), 93. 

Cir'cus Max'imus, 80. 

Citizens of Rome, 71-73. 

Ciau'dius, emperor of Rome, 84. 

Clo-a'ca Max'ima, 83. 

Clo'vis, 112-117. 

Cnos'sus, 31. 

Co-logne', III. 

Colonies of ancient Greece, 40, 41. 

Colonies of Rome, 72. 

Colosse'um, So, 90. 

Comedy, Greek, 55. 

Confederacy of Delos, 43. 

Con'stantine, emperor, 102. 

Constantino'ple, 100. 

Consuls, Roman, 73. 

Council of Five Hundred, 51. 

Cras'sus, 77. 

Crete, early civilization, 30-33. 

Cu-ne'i-form writing, 13. 

Cy'prus, 24. 

Cy'ruSj king of the Persians, 12, 20. 



Dacia (da'shi-a), settled by Germans, log. 

Darius, 26. 

Dark Ages, 109. 

David, 24. 

Deacons in Christian church, 115. 

De'los, confederacy of, 43. 

Del'phi, 37. 

De-me'ter, 37. 

Democracy in Athens, 50, 51. 

Dialogues of Plato, 57. 

Diocle'tian (-shan), 100. 

Diony'sus, festival of, 54, 55. 

Do'rians, 37, 40. 

Dress, in Athens, 47. 

East, ancient history of, 8-29. 
East Anglia, kingdom of, in. 
Education, 48-50, 87, 118. 
Eg'bert, king, in. 
Egypt, architecture and art, 22. 

classes of society, 14-16. 

commerce, 18. 

early history, 10, n. 

industries, 16-18. 

literature of, 20, 21. 

Mohammedan conquest, 113. 

religion, 18-20. 

system of writing, 13. 
Empire of Charlemagne, 119. 
Essex, kingdom of, in. 
Eternal City, 97. 
Etrus'cans, 62. 
Euphra'tej River, 9. 
Eurip'idej, ss- 
E-ze'ki-el, 23. 

Festivals, in Athens, 52-54. 

in Rome, 88. 
Fire, first used, 2, 3. 
Fo'rum, Roman, 79-81. 
Franks, 111-113, 115-118. 
French language, 93, 112. 

Ga'de§, 24. 
Gaul, 41, 62, 70. 
Germans, 102-104. 

in Britain, 109-111. 

in Gaul, 109-111. 

in Roman Army, 104, 105. - 
Gibral'tar, 91. 
Gil'gamesh (gil'-), 21. 
Gladiatorial shows, 90. 
Go'shen, 24. 
Goths, 105. 



INDEX 



125 



Grac'^hus, Gaius, 76. 
Gracchus, Tiberius, 76. 
Greece, art, 58, 59. 

assemblies, 39. 

cities, 39. 

colonization by, 40, 41. 

comedy, 55. 

commerce, 40, 41, 62. 

conquered by Macedonians, 43. 

conquered by Rome, 43. 

early civilization of, 30-33. 

geography, 30. 

historians, 56. 

industries, 30, 31. 

kings of, 39. 

in Homer's time, 34-37. 

invaded by Persians, 42, 43. 

literature, 54-57. 

Persian invasions, 42-43, 

philosophers, 57, 58. 

poetry, 55, 56. 

prehistoric Greece, 33-37. 

religion, 36, 37. 

states, 39. 

women, 35. > 

Greeks, see Greece. 

in Italy, 62, 66. 

in Sicily, 66. 

invade Persian Empire, 43. 
Gymna'sium, in Athens, 50. 
Gymnastics in Athenian education, 
49- 

Hammura'bi, King of Babylon, 12. 

code of, 12, 21. 
Han'nibal, 67, 75. 
He'brews, 24-26. 
Helen of. Troy, 34. 
Hel'lespont, 42. 
He-phass'tus {-fes'-), 36. 
He'ra, 36. 
Her'mej, 37, 59. 
Hermits, 116. 
Herod'otus, historian, 56. 
Hieroglyph 'ics, 13. 
Historians, Greek, 56. 
Ho'mer, 34, 49, 55, 104. 
Homer'ic Age, 34-40. 
Hflr'ace, 93. 
Ho'rus, 19. 
Houses, in Athens, 46. 

in Rome, 82, 83. 
Hungarians, 70. 
Huns, 105. 



Il'i-ad, 34, 52, 55. 

Iphigeni'a, 54. 

Iran (e-ran'), Plateau of, 9. 

Isaac, 24. 

I'sis, 19. 

Islands, tenements in Rome, S^, 

Israel, 25. 

Italian allies, 72, 73. 

Italy, early history, 62. 

in the empire, 78. 

language, 93, 112. 

physical features of, 61, 62. 

taxes in, 84. 

Jacob, 24. 

Ja'nus, Temple of, 90. 

Je-ho'vah, 25, 26. 

Jeru'salem, 25, 28, 100. 

Jesus of Naz'areth, 100, 114, 

Ju'dah, 25. 

Judges, Hebrew leaders, 24. 

Jugur'tha, 76. 

Julius Cae'sar, 67, 70 77. 93. 

Ju'piter, 6s, 79. 

temple, 79. 
Justin'ian, 108, 109. 
Jutes, no. III. 

Kent, kingdom of, in. 

Lake dwellers, 4-6. 
Law, Roman, 94. 
La'rej and Pena'teg, 65. 
Latin language, 93. 

literature, 93. 
Latins, 62, 63. 
La'tium (-shi-um), 66. 
Leb'anon, 23. 
Lep'idus, 77. 
Les'bos, island of, 55. 
Literature, Babylonian, 21. 

Greek, 54-57- 

Roman, 93, 94. 
Liv'y, historian, 64, 67, 93. 
Lom'bards, 109, 117-119. 
Ly'ons, 93. 

Maccdo'nians, 43. 

Mar'athon, battle of, 42. 

Mar'duk, 19, 21. 

Ma'rius, 76, 77. 

Mark An'tony, 77. 

Mars, 65. 

Mar-seilles' (-salz'), 88, 93. 



126 



INDEX 



Mauso-Ie'um, 8i. 
. Maxim'ian, loo. 
Mayor of the palace, 113, 117. 
Medeg and Per'sians, 12, 26. 
Mem'phis, capital of Egypt, 11. 
Menela'us, 34, 39. 
Mer'cia (-shi-a), kingdom of, iii. 
Mero'vius, 112. 
Metals, first use of, 6. 
Mi'nos, 31. 
Min'otaur, 31. 
Moham'med, 113. 

Mohammedans and Charlemagne, 119. 
Mon'asteries, 116. 
Monks, 116, 117. 

Monte Casino (mon'ta ka-se'no), 116. 
Moses, 24. 
My-ce'nae, 31, 34. 

Nile, valley of the, 9, 10. 
Nin'eveh, 12. 
Nobles in Rome, 84. 
Northum'bria, kingdom of, iii. 

Octa'vius, 77, 78. 
Odys'seus, 34, 39. 
Od'yssey, 34, 52, 55. 
Olym'pus, Mount, 36, 51. 
Oracles, 37. 
Osi'ris, 18, 19, 20. 
Os'tia, 79. 
Os'trogoths, 107-109. 

Pal'atine hill, 64, 80. 

Pal'estine, Mohammedanism in, 113. 

Panathenas'a, festival, 52, 54. 

Pan-the'on, 81. 

Papy'rus, 13. 

Par'is, of Troy, 34. 

Par'thenon, 58, 59. 

Pa'triar-ehs, 24. 

Patri'cians (-shanz), in Rome, 65. 

Ped'agogue in Athens, 49. 

Pep'in, 117. 

Per'iclej, 43. 

Per'istyle, 82. 

Persia, early history, 11, 12, 26, 27. 

invasions of Greece, 42, 43. 

invaded by Greeks and Macedonians, 
43. " 

Mohammedanism in,^ii3. 
Persian Empire, 26, 27. 
Peter, disciple of Jesus, 100, 115. 
Phar'ao/i, 14. 



Phid'ias, Greek sculptor, 59. 
Philip of Macedon, 43. 
Philosophers of Greece, 57, 58. 
Phceni'cia (-shi-a), 22-24, 62. 
Phoenicians, found Carthage, 66. 
Pin'dar, Greek poet, 56. 
Pirae'us, 43, 44. 
Platffi'a, battle at, 43. 
Pla'to, philosopher, 57. 
Ple-be'ians in Rome, 64, 65. 
Poetry, Greek, 55-56- 
Polished Stone Age, 4, 6. 
Pom'pey, 77. 
Pope, the, 114-11S, 117. 
Por'tuguese language, 93. 
Po-sd'don, 37. 
Prehistoric period, 1-7. 
Pri'am, 34. 

Priests in Christian church, 115. 
Primitive man, 1-7. 
Prome'lhe-ns Bound, 54. 
Provinces, Roman, 72-73, 75, 78, S 
Pu'nic Wars, 66, 67. 

Ripu-a'rian Franks, 112. 
Roman citizens, 71-73. 
Roman Empire, 68, 77. 

decline of, 97-100. 

division of, 100. 

government under Augustus, 78. 

life, 78-95. 

language, 93. 

religion, 100-102. 

roads, 91-93. 
Roman law, 94, 108. 
Roman hterature, 93, 94. 

republic, 71-77. 
Rome, amusements, 88-90. 

aqueducts, 84. 

army, 74, 78. 

assemblies, 72-74. 

baths, 86. 

beginnings of, 63, 64. 

captured by Visigoths, 106. 

Christianity in, loi, 102. 

classes of society, 71, 84-85. 

colonies, 72. 

commerce, 84, 91. 

conquests, 67. 

education, 87. 

festivals, 88. 

food, 86, 87. 

government, 73. 

growth of, 61-71. 



INDEX 



127 



Rome, houses, 82, 83. 

islands (tenements), 83. 

location, 64. 

Punic Wars, 66-67^ 

population, 80, 93 

provinces, 72, 73, 75, 78, 84. 

religion, 65. 

republic, 71-77. 

senate, 73, 78, 84. 

sewers, 83. 

slaves, 75, 8s, 97. 

society, 71, 84-85. 

theaters, 89. 

water supply, 83, 84. 

women, 87. 
Rom'ulus, 64. 
Roset'ta Stone, 14. 
Ros'tra, 80. 

Rough Stone Age, 3, 4. 
Rouma'nians, 70, 93. 

Sa'bines, 62. 

Sal'amis, battle of, 42. 

Sa'lian Franks, 112. 

Sam'nites, 62. 

Sappho (saf'o), 55, 

Sa'trap, 26. 

Sa'trapies, 26. 

Sat'yrs, 50. 

Saul, 24. 

Saxons, no, in, 118. 

Schools founded by Charlemagne, 118 

Senate, Roman, 73, 78, 84. 

Ses'terces, 89. 

Set, Egyptian god, 19, 20. 

Si'don, commerce of, 23. 

Slavery, in the East, 16. 

in Greece, 46, 51. 

in Rome, 75, 85, 97. 
Soc'rateg, 57. 

Soissons (swa-son^'), battle of, 112. 
Sol'omon, 24, 25. 
Soph'ocle^, 54. 
Spanish language, 93, 112. 
Spar'ta, 39, 40. 

conquers Athens, 43. 
Spartans in battle of Thermopylae, 42. 
Stone Age, 3-6. 
Sul'Ia, 77. 
Su-me'rians, 11. 



Sus'sex, kingdom, ni. 
Syr'ia, 9, 22. 

Mohammedanism in, 113. 

Tac'itus (tas'-), 102. 

Tenement houses in Rome, 83. 

Theaters, 54, 55 90. 

Thebeg, Egypt, 11, 28. 

Theod'oric, 107, 108. 

Thermop'ylae, battle of, 42. 

The'seus, 31. 

Thor, 104. 

Thucyd'ideg, historian, 56. 

Ti'gris-Euphra'tes valley, 11, 

Tigris River, 9. 

Ti'ryns, 31. 

Tools, invention of, 3, 4. 

Tours (toor), battle of, 114. 

Tragedies, Greek, 54, 55. 

Tra'jan, 99. 

Tri'remeg, 44. 

Trium'virates, 77. 

Tro'jan War, 34. 

Troy, 31,34. 

Twelve Tables, Law of the, 94. 

Tyre (tir), commerce of, 23. 

U-lys'sej, 34. 
Um'brians, 62. 

Ve'nus of Me'los, statue of, 59. 
Ves'ta, goddess, 65. 

temple of, 80. 
Vi'a La'ta, street in Rome, 81. 
Vi'a Sa'cra, street in Rome, 79. 
Vir'gil, 93. 
Vij'igoths, 105-107. 

Wes'sex, kingdom of, in. 
Western empire, fall of, 107. 
Women, in Greece, 35. 

in Rome, 87. 

among the Germans, 102-103, 
Wo'tan, 104. 
Writing, 13. 

Xen'ophon (zen'-), historian, 56. 

Za'ma, battle of, 67. 
Zeus, 36, 52. 



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